


Invasion of the Let's Players

by ChoirKing



Category: Oneyplays RPF, Youtube RPF
Genre: Alien Ding Dong, Alien Invasion, Embedded Gif Images, Embedded Images, Explicit Language, Game Grumps - Freeform, Major Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Slow Burn, SuperMega - Freeform, Swearing, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-03-21 07:59:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 62
Words: 72,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13736571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChoirKing/pseuds/ChoirKing
Summary: Not long ago, the population of a distant planet was eradicated by an invading force known as the Let's Players. Now the only survivor of the destruction must once again face the beings responsible- with friends. Join Chris "Oney" O'Neill and his cohorts Ding Dong and Julian as they infiltrate the ranks of the Let's Players and try to save themselves (and their fellow Youtubers, and the Earth, too, probably) from a horribly unfunny fate!





	1. Pink Mustache

_Downtown Los Angeles, on the little TV in the back of the 7-Eleven..._

_“And that’s why you shouldn’t feed your pets lemons. In other news, it looks like we’ve got a kerfuffle of some sort just North of Downtown. Our intrepid Jim is on the scene with more info.”_

_“Jim, what do you see?”_

_“Jim and Jims out in the viewing audience, what appears from this angle, and, from many other angles, indeed, to be an enormous pink tuchus, has landed in Los Angeles causing what must be at least, ah, one dollar in damage, perhaps more. Millions are dead. Not because of this, but millions.”_

_“The intended purposes and intentions of the brilliantly-hued behind are unknown, but mayhaps it merely seeks, ah, a comfortable place to rest its delicate pink cheeks. Back to you, Jim-”_

“This fuckin’ sucks,” muttered Chris O'Neil, arms folded as he sat criss-cross applesauce on the tile floor of the 7-11. He glared at the shelf of twinkies directly across the aisle, thinking about the fifteen minutes leading up to their arrival here, 2/3rds dressed and smelling like garbage.

Chris O'Neil, known online as OneyNG (among other things), had scheduled a recording session with his co-hosts Ding Dong and Julian. They’d planned on getting a few hours in playing a game or two, to upload to Youtube over the next couple of weeks to Chris’s Channel, “OneyPlays”. He’d only just buzzed into their apartment when the rumbling started.

“At least you’ve got pants on,” said Julian, tugging the hem of his shirt down over his pudgy, brown middle and glancing furtively down the aisle toward the convenience store counter. The cashier was nowhere to be seen, probably in the back, but, if they were smart, they’d be running for the hills.

“If it’s that important to you, you can have ‘em back,” Ding Dong sighed, shooting a look at Julian, and then a glare toward Chris. “They don’t even fit me, really.”

“Hey, if I knew we were all gonna die today I would'n'a gone commando-” Chris snapped, uncrossing his arms and gesturing emphatically toward his crotch. “ _But guess what_ , it was a surprise to all of us, okay?”

“You can have your stupid hat back, too,” said Ding Dong, though he didn’t move to take it off.

“Yeah, you do look weird without it,” Julian chimed in. “We could uh, probably get another hat around here somewhere, we  _are_  in a convenience store.”

“We could _probably_ prioritize staying alive over buying hats,” Ding Dong suggested, looking up at the ceiling, past the little CRT TV they’d just shut off and into the store’s security camera.

Chris O'Neil tuned out of the exchange, recalling the afternoon’s events. He’d just gotten into the apartment- Julian had answered the door, and Ding Dong was already knelt in front of the couch, turning on the GameCube and TV. Julian always answered the door, just in case it was somebody unfamiliar and he had to slam it shut before they could see Ding Dong.

Because Ding Dong was an alien.

And not an alien like Chris was an alien, visiting the United States from Ireland on a visa. No, Ding Dong was from outer-fucking-space, having crash-landed through Chris’s roof almost two years ago. And then crash-landed in Julian’s pool last year in his poorly-planned attempt to return to his home planet. Shortly after transforming from one disgusting slug-like form into another, slightly more humanoid, slug-like form.

Luckily for the two of them, Julian was more than cool with it, and a few more privileged  people joined their friend group soon after. Chris’s old friend Arin and his channel, the Game Grumps, Matt and his friend Ryan of SuperMega, and so on and so forth, eventually building an epic web presence worthy of legend. Or at least of tale. Or maybe of “cool story bro”. They had a few hundred thousand subsribers. OneyPlays wasn’t the most successful channel on the Youtubes, but it wasn’t nothin to spit at, in Chris’s opinion.

Julian had answered the door and Ding Dong had stumbled to his feet as the earthquake began. The building had weathered earthquakes before, but nothing like this. A roar came from the west, the death knell of the five-story complex that had Chris grabbing Julian by the shirt and pulling him through the doorway, shouting Ding Dong’s name as the pale extraterrestrial dashed for the door, nearly falling to all fours before making it out into the hall. The three of them running for their lives down the hallway, doing their best not to hesitate or glance back at the audible destruction and praying to whatever higher forces might listen that the plate glass window in front of them was soft.

It was soft enough, softer than Chris’s hard head, thankfully; as was the dumpster full of trash two stories below that they landed in. It was full of slop from the restaurant in the building next door, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, after all. Such was the sentiment as they disguised Ding Dong and hurried down the street toward the 7-11.

And now they were in the 7-11 being choosy beggars about potential public indecency laws.

“So how we gonna do  _that_ , Dingus?” Chris snapped, giving Ding Dong a squint.

“Do what?” Ding Dong asked, halfway up the wall and tugging at the cord of the camera.

“Oh, be careful,” rasped Julian, upon realizing what Ding Dong was up to (having been pre-occupied with the contents of the glass coolers on the nearby wall).

“Stay _alive_ , dummy!” Chris pushed himself to his feet. “It’s the Let’s Players, isn’t it?”

Ding Dong had mentioned them once or twice; the alien invaders that destroyed his home planet. The pale spacefarer huffed, his hooded gaze darting side to side, avoiding eye contact with either of the two humans. “Probably.”

“ _Probably?_  Did you not see the big ol’ mustache? Or were you too busy lookin’ at Julian’s?”

“ _I saw it!_ ” Ding Dong snapped, giving Chris a glare. “It’s just… It’s not their MO, you know? Back then they…”

It seemed hard for him to continue, and while Chris knew why, he leaned on Ding Dong with a glare, dimly aware of Julian uncomfortably shuffling his bare feet on the tile behind him.

“They just came down and started _killing_ everyone. None of this just…” He gestured at the TV. “It’s just  _sitting there!_ ”

“ _Is it_ just sitting there?” asked Julian, looking up at the darkened screen as well. They’d shut off the broadcast. It was painful to watch, each of them already knowing more than the reporter on the scene. Or, well, they thought they had.

Chris picked up the remote again, turning the TV back on, but quickly hit the mute button. The first channel seemed to be having a normal weather report, so he flipped to the next, and the next, until he found a broadcast with a live view of the ship. It was a helicopter view, almost entirely obscured by the smoke from their apartment building. 

“Oh, for fuck’s-” Chris started, when suddenly the view cleared, and they saw the ship clearly. The three held their breath, each expecting the worst as the shuddering camera scooted closer to the big pink machine, and the open door in the side.


	2. Literally Space Nazis

The door that had opened in the side of the mustache had lifted; rising outward into the air like the gullwing door of a particularly dated car, obscuring the view of the opening below. Chris quickly changed the channel. Another reporter- this one a lady- stood before the opening as the image changed to ground level.

“Chris, don’t-” warned Julian, and the three of them realized what they might just be about to witness.

The camera automatically adjusted itself for the difference in lighting to reveal two beings behind the reporter- large beings, each fully outfitted in armor that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary in any Triple-A “space marine” Game-of-the-Year nominee, obscuring their true appearance.

“TURN IT OFF!” shrieked Ding Dong, but Chris couldn’t look away. In fact, he unmuted the TV.

“ **What’s your Gamertag?** ”

“Excuse me, what?” The woman was shocked by the question. She turned to face the foreigner and raised her microphone to record his response.

“ **Gamertag. Username? Channel name?** ”

“Channel name?” she stumbled over her words, almost recognizing the request. “KBEX-TV?”

“ **That’s a weird one,** ” said the hulk of a creature, tapping something on one of its forearms and causing its helmet to illuminate. “ **What’s your internet video source of choice around here?** ”

“Uh,” the reporter glanced at the camera, or perhaps, to her cameraman, who answered for her.

“Youtube?”

“ **KBEX-TV on Youtube.** ” The two overdressed beasts seemed to glance at each other for a moment, perhaps conferring with each other. “ **I’m not seeing a lot of video games, here.** ”

“V-Video-?” the reporter was at a loss.

“ **They don’t get it.** ” The Master Chief clone sighed and turned to its compatriot. “ **SnarfLag, give ‘em the speech.** ” 'SnarfLag’, as he was called, shoved his stoic partner out of the way and raised his hands theatrically.

“ **PEOPLE OF EARTH!** ” His voice rang out through the 7-11. “ **Bring us your mightiest warriors, tested in the finest simulated battles! We have arrived in this, the hub of your culture, seeking the best gamers you have to offer; judged by your own metrics, yes, judged solely  by their follower count!** ”

 

Julian and Chris jumped at the sound of Ding Dong audibly slapping his face into his palm. Chris muted the TV and the two humans turned to face their alien friend, who had disengaged the camera from the wall and now held it loosely in one hand while the other barely managed to cover one eye, much less disguise his disgruntled expression. “What’s up?” asked Chris.

“They’re expanding their ranks,” Ding Dong clarified, tossing the camera down to Chris, who haphazardly caught it. “And they’re using a Youtube popularity contest to do it.”

“So… They’re not gonna kill anyone?” Julian suggested, hope in his voice.

“I wouldn’t say that,” replied Ding Dong, hopping down from the shelf and taking his shoes and pants off, offering them back to Julian. He wasn’t revealing much in doing so; nothing more troubling than his stubby tail and obviously inhuman feet (the absence of certain other anatomical features would be trhe troubling part). “They’re losing the element of surpise, though, that’s for sure.”

Chris tossed the discarded camera over his shoulder and tugged his beanie off Ding Dong’s head (revealing the rest of his clearly alien biology in the form of the two sensory protrusions atop his cranium), returning it to its rightful place: covering his own dusky brown locks. “So they’re gonna adopt some humans, huh?”

“Oh shit!” interjected Julian, pointing up at the muted screen. “They already have!”

The screen still showed footage of the armor-clad alien waxing poetic to its captive audience, but across the bottom of the screen, the headline text read “Let’s Players Only”, and on the right side, a picture of a person was superimposed over the action.

“Is that Mark?” Chris asked, tilting his head. It was an old photo, a screenshot from one of his old-old videos, more than likely taken from the first page of Google Images. It changed all too quickly to a certain green-haired Irishman (who, in reality, no longer had green hair, but in the wonderful world of on-the-spot image searching…), “Sean?”

“ 'Early Access’? “ Julian read aloud from the sub-header. He shook his head, disappointed. “Oh, like a videooo gaaaame. Of course.”

“Well if that’s who they’re taking as the most popular, then…” Chris started, scratching his chin. “Think we could get in by association? I mean, we know those guys. Kinda. We know guys who know those guys.”

“Why would you WANT to?” cried Ding Dong. “They’re literally space nazis! They’ve killed planets worth of people!”

“Yah, but it wouldn’t be us, right?”

“Oh my god, Chris,” Julian cut in with a note of disbelief. “You don’t really wanna-”

“ _NO_ ,” Chris sassed, “ _I DON’T_ , but I do wanna live, and that’s one way to do it, right?”

“Maybe they’ll find enough gamers and be satisfied,” Ding Dong muttered. “It’s not anybody we work with, right?”

“Uh,” Julian interrupted, looking up at the screen again.  
“Oh, what the fuck?” said Chris, noticing the TV and unmuting again.

 

“You FUCKERS!” was the first thing out of the speakers as Ryan practically dragged Matt toward the invaders, righteous fury overwhelming his injuries. “You blew up our apartment! Fucking terrorists!”

“We had PETS in there!” snarled Matt, huffing as Ryan ran out of steam and leaned on him. “Roomates, even!”

“Sir, please,” started one of several reporters- the camera suddenly pitched, turning to reveal a number of camera crews, news trucks, and, on the other side of them, emergency vehicles with lights flashing. The cameraman finally refocused on the scene, showing that he’d just been shoved by one of the aliens.

“ **Fighting spirit in these two,** ” said SnarfLag, his cheery compliment falling on deaf ears as Ryan spat a mouthful of blood on the pavement at his feet.

The other primed whatever computer system was in its armor and gruffly spoke.   
“ **What’s your Youtube channel?** ”


	3. The Promise of Socialized Healthcare

Matt glanced down at Ryan, who tilted his denim-blue baseball cap up to scratch his head. Tension having vanished, the two unintentionally replied in unison. “Supermega?”

As the alien beast typed, they both began talking at the same time, though they were far from being on the same page.

“How did you know we had a Youtube channel?” asked Matt. “How do aliens even know what Youtube is? Are- Are you guys aliens? Is this a spaceship? Holy fuck, did you-”

“I think I need to go to the hospital, like, this is an actual medical attention situation. There’s blood in my mouth and my stomach really hurts? Matt, Matt? I think I’m gonna hurl, dude.”

“ **Four hundred thousand.** ” The dull one stated, as bland as ever. The two aliens turned to face the young men, impassive. “ **…Not bad.** ”

“Oh, thank god,” Julian laid a hand on his chest and sighed in relief before finishing pulling his pants on. Chris squinted at him.

“Wh- Are you _happy_  Matt and Ryan are being abducted by aliens, dude?”

“W-well they’re not being  _murdered_  by aliens, so I thought it was okay!”

“They’re gonna get probed anally and you’re gonna jack off to it-”

“Chris, what the- I wasn’t  _planning_ on it!”

“ _JUULIAN-_ ”

Ding Dong looked pensive, anxiously tapping his fingers against his cheek. “We can do without Matt and Ryan. I’ll just have to… do some more editing to pick up the slack. No big deal.”

“- **for the trials** -” boomed one of the alien voices from the TV, drawing attention back upwards.

 

“ **Yes! You will do well in the trials!** ” SnarfLag announced, applauding.

“Trials?” asked Matt, his eyes darting down to Ryan and back up. “We’re- we’re not really-”

“We could use some medical attention? Some of that would be nice.”

“Yeah, some of that, for real, cuz I think we really are actuallyyy. Injured.”

“ **Worry not, you will be well cared for in the trials. Once you prove yourselves, you will be welcomed into the immortal ranks of the Let’s Players!** ”

“ **Our technology beats yours by miles,** ” bragged the less dramatic alien. “ **We’ll heal ya.** ”

“Yeaaah, I don’t know if we can like, afford-”

“Yeah our apartment just got destroyed so-”

“I think I left my insurance card in my other pants.”

“ **What is… Insurance?** ” asked SnarfLag. “ **Recovery services are complimentary.** ”

Ryan’s jaw dropped and he looked up at Matt, who took an extra second to pick up on the bit.

“Dude! Matt! Socialized Healthcare!”

“Here in America? It’s a miracle!”

 

“Trials? They’re gonna put ‘em through trials?” asked Chris, turning to Ding Dong.

“Don’t look at me!” Ding Dong spat, turning to walk toward the front of the store. “I don’t know what they’re talking about!”

“They haven’t mentioned anything about, y'know, genocide yet.” Chris left the remote on the shelf behind him and followed Ding Dong to the checkout counter, watching intently as the alien hopped the counter and started rifling through the shelves. Julian finished with his pants and started shuffling into his shoes, hopping behind the other two.

“They wouldn’t tip their hand this early,” Ding Dong grumbled, lifting an iphone from a drawer and looking over it. He put it back and kept looking. “Unless they were coming out guns blazin’, then uh… Yeah they probably would. Never mind.”

“The hell are you lookin’ for?”

“I left my laptop in the apartment!” Ding Dong explained, irritated. “I gotta find a new one.”

“Wha d'you need it for?”

“Well we’re gonna  _need_  it if we wanna keep making videos. Or if we want to get on that ship without doing any trials.”

“Oh,  _now_  you’re open to being a space nazi!” Chris shouted, victorious.

“You heard them!” Ding Dong shouted back. “Complimentary healthcare?? Julian and I have had to rely on WebMD and Walgreens to try and not die all the time! Doctors are expensive!”

“Not to mention the whole 'alien’ thing, right?” asked Chris, sarcastically.

“Yeah, we had to make our own drugs and smuggle them across the border,” wheezed Julian.

“ _Julian,_ ” Ding Dong scolded, smiling.

“I didn’t mean that kind of alien!” cried Chris. “I meant space alien! Cuz of your messed up fuckin’ squid organs!”

“I mean, yeah,” said Julian, double-checking his shoelaces. “That’s part of it, probably.”

Ding Dong went back to the search, seeming to drop the subject. “We might have to drop by the Space for a new laptop. They’ll probably let us have one since the world is ending.”

“Aw man, they’ll be all over this,” Chris laughed. “If they weren’t invited to the uh, the pre-order party.”

“The early access?” Julian said, at the same time. “They don’t do a lot of those, do they?”

“Well they know both Mark and Jack,  _and_ they’ve got over a million subs.”

“Over  _four_  million,” Ding Dong corrected, clambering back over the counter.

“Yeah sure, Nitpick Magee,” laughed Chris.

“No- Nitpick Magee just got  _abducted by aliens_!” called Julian, emphatically. “We saw it on TV!”

“Way t'bring it full circle, Julian.” Ding Dong sighed, hopping down from the counter and glancing out the glass door of the 7-11 beside them. “I don’t see anybody, we could probably make a run for it.”

“I could get us an Uber,” Chris offered, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a moldy leaf of lettuce, which he tossed to the floor and reached in again, retrieving a horribly mangled piece of glass and plastic that used to be a phone. “Or not.”

“What _was_ that?” asked Julian, patting down his own pockets.

“It’s from the dumpster,” Chris reminded him, dropping the phone’s remains to the tile below and digging through his pockets in case of any excess detritus. “Guess my phone got broke in the fall.”

“I don’t think anybody’s gonna be doing any Ubering anyway, cuz of the whole alien invasion.”

“Don’t underestimate people!” Julian laughed. “Especially not LA people.”

“Okay yeah, I’ll give you that,” admitted Ding Dong. “I could probably still go out without a disguise because of it, though.”

“What, 'cause you don’t like wearing our stinky clothes?” accused Chris.

“No, because it’s  _hot_ in LA!” Ding Dong shot back. “Anything more than a t-shirt and I feel like my  _nublets_  are gonna melt off!”

“Okay, I know you’re talking about your ears,” Julian cut in, pointing up at Ding Dong’s head, “but the way you said it, it sounded like you were talking about something else.”

“Julian, stop being gay and let’s  _go_ already!” Chris interjected, shoving open the convenience store door with a loud electronic ping. “To the Grump Space!”


	4. The Australian Abstains

“They’re not here.”

The trip across LA in broad daylight went surprisingly without event, even people who hadn’t heard about the spaceship landing a few blocks away were unimpressed with the furry space slug speed-walking down the avenue with an absurdly tall Irishman and a chubby Mexican jogging to keep up. Of course, it might be because it was clear they had places to be and things to do, and everyone knew not to bother with someone who wasn’t about to stop.

They arrived at the Grump Space and weren’t immediately greeted, wandering through the moodlit anime-merch coated hallways until they found Ross O'Donovan, alone, sitting at the wet bar and sipping a ramune like a hardened noir detective about to start monologuing.

“What do you mean they’re not here?”

“They left me behind as an apocalypse diary, dude. In case they don’t come back.”

“From what?” asked Chris, and Ding Dong elbowed him in the arm. “Ow!”

“From the  _mustache_!” Julian explained, gesturing over his shoulder. “The  _aliens,_  remember?”

“Yeah, ever since the early access reveal Arin’s been all over Twitter reading about it.” Ross’s ramune bottle jingled as he sipped from it, giving the décor on the opposite counter a thousand-yard-stare. “Apparently Sean and the others have been tweeting from the ship, inviting gamers to LA for today’s landing. It’s like, open access now? So they’re all out there trying to fuck some aliens, I think.”

“DING DONG!” Chris shrieked, and the other occupants of the room jumped.

“The fuck, Chris?” Ross cussed, having managed to splash Japanese soda all over his black shirt.

“WHAT?” Ding Dong yelled back, attempting to recover his composure with Julian clinging to his arm and starting to giggle out of nerves.

“You’re the one who’s the most active on Twitter- you’re supposed to be up on this shit!”

“I  _TOLD_  YOU, we’ve been taking a  _BREAK_  from Twitter!”

“Yeah, Chris, you knew that!” Julian agreed, still clinging to Ding Dong. “I mean it’s not like we have a way to check now anyway, since our apartment got brokeded.”

“Someone broke into your apartment?” asked Ross, frowning. “Shit, dude.”

“No, the big-ass alien spaceship landed on it,” Chris corrected. “Oh hey, that reminds me. DingDang needs a computer. Ya got a spare?”

Ross was caught off guard by the request. “Uh, yeah, sure. There’s probably one around here somewhere…” He stood from the barstool and the four of them shuffled out into the hall, heading back the way they came toward a little, sparsely-decorated office. Ross glanced around for a moment, peering over the desktop computer before turning to the bookcase on the wall and pushing it open with a little dramatic flair.

“Ross, we’ve been here before, it’s not that impressive.”

“Yeah, in fact the other way would have probably been faster.”

“I wanted to look in Vernon’s office first, shut up.”

They made their way into the open office floor, glancing over empty desks and tables, not sure where to begin when Julian turned to the left and perked up.

“Hey guys, here’s one!”

“Oh yeah, Brian’s twitter computer.”

“You’ll have to fight him for it,” Chris joked, before looking over his shoulder at the empty office. “He’s not here, is he?”

“Nah, he’s got like, a life and a family.”

“Don’t you?” asked Ding Dong, reaching behind the computer to coil up the charge cable. “Pigeons?”

Ross nodded, scratching his head. “Honestly I just came here to hang out and be alone for a bit. Eat all the snacks. I didn’t expect you guys to come by. Holly’s staying behind too, y'know. Gotta keep the pants on the pigeons.”

Ding Dong nodded solemnly, tucking the computer under his arm and holding out his hand to shake Ross’s. “I wish you luck in the coming apocalypse.”

“You guys too,” hummed Ross, accepting the handshake. “What apocalypse?”

“Can we hurry this up? This place is creeping me out.”

“Julian?  _You’re_  creeped out?”

“It’s like they’re _here_  but nobody’s here! It’s like being in somebody else’s brain. Like Psychonauts.”

“I thought you  _liked_  Psychonauts.”

“Yeah, but not  _in real life!_ ”

“Ha ha, seriously. What apocalypse?”

 

The trio of intruders explained what they knew about the Let’s Players, and Ross listened impassively, taking it all in.

“So, as far as you know, they normally kill everybody. Like, nothing spared, scorched Earth policy, fuck ‘em up, no survivors, kill  _everybody_.”

“ _Basically_.” Ding Dong shrugged emphatically. “I mean, my planet was way different from Earth, so I don’t know how well they’d do here on that. But they seem pretty confident.”

Ross took a deep breath. “Well. Somethin’ to look forward to, huh?”

“Wow, that’s depressing,” Chris muttered.

“I came here to be sad, bitch. Step off.”

Chris made a face and sunk into himself, getting Ross to smile.

“You’re ruining my mood, fucker! Get out of here,  _all_ of you jokesters.”

 

They were back on the street and moseying back toward the crash site as Ding Dong tapped away on the laptop.

“So what are you gonna do with that thing?” Chris asked, nonchalantly picking his ear.

“I’m gonna see if I can hack Youtube.”

“What? Why?” asked Julian, slowing his pace to look over Ding Dong’s shoulder. He didn’t see anything he could understand; lines and lines of HTML filled the browser window, covering the screen.

“Maybe if we have enough subscribers we can skip the trials they mentioned.”

“You don’t want to do the trials, Ding Dong?” asked Chris.

“Considering these guys are mass murderers, I don’t want to see what they do if you fail 'em.”

“Good point. Good point.”

“It’s not my preferred language,” Ding Dong sighed, apologetically. “But maybe they’ll let us in before somebody figures it out and we get  _banned from Youtube forever._ ”

“That’s not gonna happen-” Julian hummed, patting Ding Dong’s shoulder.

“It’s gonna happen  _immediately_ , I promise you.”

Soon enough the giant mustache was visible around the corner. The rising smoke had thinned considerably and the emergency vehicles had pulled to the side to focus on evacuating the remains of the spared half of the apartment building. Chris began to make the sound of a baby crying as they approached, and Julian slapped his arm.

“That’s not funny,” Ding Dong chided, but he smiled regardless.


	5. Hashtag Reaction Image

The aliens stood like bouncers outside an exclusive club; intimidatingly tall and uncomfortably wide. If the armor at all described whatever was inside, they were shaped like enormous humanoids. Julian broke out in a flop sweat and Chris preemptively slapped his shoulder.

“ _I didn’t even say anything yet!_ ” Julian wheezed, announcing their presence to the plated spacefarers.

“ **Halt, humans.** ”

“ _Of all the people to say that to,_ ” Ding Dong muttered, tapping a key on the laptop and shutting it, tucking it under his arm.

“ **What is your Youtube channel?** ”

Chris looked up at Ding Dong and Julian, who were both staring at him. “Oh shit, uh, OneyPlays. OneyPlays on Youtube.”

“ **O-N-I-E-Plays-?** ”

“O-N-E-Y. Like uh…”

“Liiiike ‘one’ with a whyyyy…” Julian attempted, stretching his vowel sounds.

“Like 'Money’ without an ’M’.” Ding Dong offered.

The gruff alien quieted, his fingers coming to a halt on the keyboard. The theatrical alien turned to him, tilting his helmeted head.

“ **Fourteen million, seven hundred ninety thousand subscibers.** ”

Chris raised an eyebrow and met Ding Dong’s stare, recognizing that his expression of self-satisfaction covered what Chris knew to be near-meltdown anxiety, judging by the stiff angle of his nublets and the slime trickling from his lips and making its way down his jaw.

“ **D-… Dante?** ” asked SnarfLag, leaning toward his compatriot. “ **You okay?** ”

“ **I’m so sorry, my dudes,** ” Dante stated, shaking his head. “ **I’m shocked that you weren’t invited to the early access. Just barely slipped under the fifteen million cutoff point.** ”

“Yeah, well, you know,” said Chris, glancing between his equally nervous cohorts. Julian was still sweating and Ding Dong was still drooling. “Just a lotta… funny content.  _Love the funnies._ ”

“ **Come in, come in,** ” welcomed Dante, motioning for SnarfLag to step aside. The two enormous armored invaders moved out of the shade of the mustache, bidding the three youtube sensations to enter. “ **Your fellow and lesser Let’s Players are waiting within to begin the trials.** ”

 

“ _SHIT!_ ” Ding Dong cursed as soon as they’d entered the door.

Chris’s eyes hadn’t yet adjusted, and he felt Julian grip his shirt in his panic, causing him to startle himself. “ _What??_ What’s wrong?”

“I was trying to get us  _out_  of the trials! I don’t even know what our odds are now if the Grumps are here. We could probably beat Matt and Ryan, but Arin and Danny are a lot more experienced. Ah- oh fuck.”

“Aw, rude!” The trio’s eyes finally adjusted, and there was Arin, grinning, arms crossed over his pink Kirby t-shirt; harem-panted legs spread to a confident angle.

“Flattering, but rude!” Danny chimed in, leaning around Arin’s butt from his seat on the bench behind him, his own khaki-tan Rush tee and torn-up faded-ass blue jeans rocking the spot.

“Oh hey! You guys escaped the apartment!” There was Ryan, as seen on TV.

“Nice!” Matt, likewise.

They looked to be in some futuristic locker room, some Subnautica-looking chamber with shining white lockers along each wall and stacked down the center of the space, and each row had a line of polished metal benches sitting just in front of them. And, sitting on those benches were Danny and Suzy of the Game Grumps, Matt and Ryan of Supermega, and… a kid?

“Huh.” said Julian, looking at them all. “Kind of expected there’d be more of us.”

“Yeah, we wanted to wait around for more, but this’ll probably do for open access day one,” mused Suzy, her yellow seagull tee showing off her arm tattoo, sporty athletic shorts and overall minimalist look made her seem prepared for whatever trials may lay ahead.

“Holy shit, is that another alien?” asked the kid, pointing at Ding Dong while looking to Matt and Ryan.

“Nope.” answered Ding Dong, grinning uncomfortably.

“Yeah that’s Ding Dong,” Ryan said, smiling, sweaty, pale.

“Yeah, he’s just  _like_  that,” Matt chimed in, largely the same.

“Sorry Ding Dong,” Suzy apologized. “This is Ethan! He was on tour with Mark up until the early access dropped, so you never got a chance to meet.”

“He’s cool, though,” vetted Matt. “We’ve been talking about Overwatch.”

“Yeah, how about that new hero,  _Moyy-ra?_ ” asked Danny, cheerfully. “She’s hot!”

“Seriously though dude, that is an alien, right?” asked Ethan, making tenuous eye contact between Ding Dong and Matt. “Because that’s cool? That’s cool! But he’s like, staring at me and oozing.”

“ _Ding_  Dong!” Chris scolded, playfully. “Don’t drool at the kid!”

“I’m  _not!_ ” Ding Dong whined, pouting, his voice sounding dry. “I’m just…  _slimy in general._ ”

“Oh… Oh  _Ding Dong!_ ” exclaimed Ethan, uncrossing his arms from in front of his blue and gray shirt, eyes widening in recognition. “You sound different in person!”

“We all sound different in person,” Ding Dong deadpanned. “We’re not all screaming twenty-four-seven, for instance.”

“Speaking of screaming,” started Matt; “you guys oughta get your uh, re- recovery-?”

“Oh yeah, the  _recovery system_!” said Ryan, his enthusiasm dripping with sarcastic venom. “Works  _pretty well_  if you ask me!”

“It’s required for the trials though,” Suzy mentioned, sympathetically. She turned to Ryan. “They must be important.’

“Yeah, so if we wanna get started,” cheered Arin, attempting to improve the mood, “you guys are gonna have to get 'em installed!”

“You guys are awfully cheerful for like, maybe being on death row,” observed Julian.

“For  _what?_ ” asked Dan, a nervous grin and darting eyes beneath a mound of untameable hair.

“You guys didn’t know?” Chris asked, smiling in spite of the situation at hand. “This is like, Space Nazi Hunger Games.”


	6. Just A Click

They’d almost laughed.

Almost.

But four of the six knew the Oney gang, knew that if something like that came out of Chris’s mouth out of nowhere that Ding Dong and Julian would be losing their shit. That, if they’d discussed the joke beforehand, one of the two would be stifling giggles, that Julian would be smiling, that Ding Dong would be looking away and failing to cover his big grinning mouth. It wasn’t happening.

No, Julian looked sad, nervous, twiddling his fingers and avoiding eye contact with everyone. Ding Dong’s nonexisient eyebrows knit above hooded eyes, staring down at the white tile floor.

Arin demanded more information, and Chris offered up everything he knew. What Ding Dong had told him about the loss of his home planet. What he’d inferred himself from the aliens outside and the way they’d nonchalantly landed on their apartment building. The fact that they were aliens, that there was no way of knowing what their intentions were or what they were capable of.

 

“I dunno,” said Arin, shrugging. “I say we give ‘em the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they’re different now. Maybe it’s a different group entirely! Let’s see what they’re about, first, I mean. On Twitter Mark and Jack made it sound like they were having fun. Playing alien video games and shit? That sounds like a great time.”

“Chris, Ding Dong,” said Danny, slowly. Thinking about his words. “If it’s the same aliens, then what they did really sucked. I get that! But at the same time, I think we’re kinda already in the shit.” He tugged at his collar. “I say we let it play out a while, find out some more about the situation before freaking out, you know?”

“Why are you doing that with your neck?” asked Julian, watching Danny’s involuntary action as his collar tug turned into a brief neck scratch that prompted Suzy and Ethan to do the same.

“Recovery System,” said Ryan, unfolding his arms and gesturing over his shoulder.

“Yeah, the room’s on the other side of the lockers,” Matt chimed in.

“You guys go ahead, I… think we ought to talk about this some more,” Suzy mumbled, biting one of her long, laquered fingernails.

Chris nodded, and his cohorts followed him along the wall of the mustache, behind the row of lockers to an unassuming circular door. It opened like a camera apterture, all sharp-looking triangles sliding out of the way and into the doorframe and, on the other side, in a sparsely decorated little white-ass, dentist’s-office-looking room, stood Chris O'Neil.

 

Well, it looked like Chris O'Neill. Like a kind of bored, angry Chris O'Neill in a black shirt, with pale, white skin, black hair and a black beanie. And then, for a moment, it was shorter, stouter. It had round, sleepy eyes and a thin black mustache. It was holding a laptop. And then it wasn’t- it was back to being Chris. The opposing Chris O'Neill cleared its throat.

“ **More contenders, marvelous,** ” it spoke, sounding _almost_  like Chris, but deliberate, overpronounced. “ **We welcome you to the Let’s Player Trials.** ”

“Can we ask you about that, by the way?” Ding Dong muttered, looking around the small, minimalistic room, not expecting much of an answer.

“ **The upcoming Trial Tutorial will explain more than enough,** ” spoke NegaChris, hands folded behind its back. “ **In the meantime I can fit you for a personalized Recovery Node. It will be a signifciant factor in your performance during the Trials.** ”

“Alright, lay it on me!” Chris announced, stepping forward and holding out his hand to the mirror image.

The being pulled its hands from behind its back- and with a flash of red and blue, it was holding, well, it looked like a grappling hook gun. A fist-sized three-pronged claw was at the business end, connected to the grip by a clear glass chamber with three little copper plates inside.

“The fuck is that?” asked Ding Dong, squinting.

“ **The Applicator Gun is harmless. Once the Node is inserted, it ensures no open wound is left behind.** ”

“Comforting,” Julian commented, taking a full step backwards toward the apterture door.

“Aaah’ll go first,” Chris volunteered, getting closer to the doppelganger. “S'not gonna be that bad.”

“ **Please turn around.** ”

Chris complied, then froze. “Wait, you’re not gonna shove it up my ass, are you?”

Before he could complete the thought, there was a  _click_ , and a stabbing pain in the back of his neck. But it was over as soon as it had begun, and he stumbled forward, throwing a hand to the back of his neck, feeling something round and hard just under the skin there.

“Chris!” Ding Dong called, watching him intently for any negative reaction.

“I’m-… I’m okay, I think,” Chris answered, turning back to look at the monochrome Chris, noting that now there were two copper plates in the gun’s barrel. “Your turn, Dingus.”

Ding Dong frowned, hesitant, his eyes on the gun.

“What, you gonna chicken out  _already_?” Chris taunted. “Coward.”

“Momma didn’t raise no coward,” insisted Ding Dong, crossing his arms and turning his back.

Chris watched as his copy raised the gun to the back of Ding Dong’s neck- with a  _click_ , the claw snapped in and back out, pulling a hole in Ding Dong’s flesh and injecting the copper plate into the space, then whipping everything closed with a  _clack_  and a tiny flash of light, sealing his skin back over it. Ding Dong’s whole body shuddered as soon as it was over, but he shook off his wide-eyed expression of shock and pain to give Chris a confident smirk.

“Okay you guys, like, I’m no stranger to piercings and body mods and stuff?” Julian interjected, raising a hand to weakly point at the gun. “But uh,  _not into this._ ”

“Julian,” scoffed Ding Dong. “It’s just a pinch. Like getting a flu shot.”

“Yeah, except the whole back of your neck opened up! I  _think_ I saw Chris’s  _spine_.”

“Don’ hurt, tho.” Chris shrugged.

“Julian.” Ding Dong addressed again. “It’s okay. Really.”

“Nuh-uh. You guys can just leave me in the locker room, I’m  _totally okay_  with staying behind on this one.”

“Julian-” Ding Dong started, but Chris cut him off.

“ _JOOOLIAN!_ ” Chris hollered, hopping forward and grabbing the jumpier man’s wrist. “Come on, Julian! We  _both_  did it already!”

“Julian.” Ding Dong said, gently, taking Julian’s other wrist. “You can do it, too.”

Julian was dismayed, but wasn’t as confident in his self-exclusion as before. “Fucking-!!  _Peer pressure!_  You guys are bullying me! We- are we gonna jump off a  _cliff_ next?”

“It might come to that,” Ding Dong mused, dull and deadpan as ever.

“Come  _on_ , Julian!” Chris growled. “We ain’t got time for this!”

“Fine,  _fine!_ ” Julian relented, pulling his arms out of their grip and turning around with a huff and a pout. “I’ll do it. But… Ding Dong…”

“Yeah?” asked Ding Dong, stepping closer.

Julian grabbed Ding Dong’s hand, squeezing it. Chris’s duplicate stepped forward.  _Click. Clack._

“Ow.” Ding Dong stated.

“Sorry.” Julian apologized.

“Gayyy.” Chris teased.


	7. Cold Feet Overruled

“ **Two Solo players, two Two-player teams, and one Three-player team.** ”

“ **Of a city of nearly four million individuals, on a planet with a population of seven billion. We have nine.** ”

“ **Not bad, all things considered.** ”

“ **Oh yeah, definitely better than the last planet.** ”

Arin, Danny, and Ethan were huddled on either side of the exit door, listening intently to the muffled discussion outside as the Oney trio returned to the locker room.

“What’s goin’ on?” asked Chris- and he was shushed by Ethan.

“ _Dude, shut up! They’re talking about us!_ ”

Julian went to sit by Matt, but Ding Dong’s nublets perked and he joined Ethan by the door.

 

“ **Oh, KGBJeff says the last three got their R-disks in.** ”

“ **Splendid. We ought to get them to the Tutorial- I’m sure they’re simply champing at the bit to get started.** ”

“ **…Did you have horses on your planet?** ”

“ **No. Why?** ”

 

“ _The longer we’re here, the less I like this,_ ” Danny mumbled, shoulder to shoulder with Arin.

“ _Dude, your hair is tickling my face,_ ” Arin replied.

“ _What in the world is that_ smell?” asked Ethan, crouched under Ding Dong.

“ _We all ask that question when starting puberty,_ ” Ding Dong stated dryly, leaning over Ethan to continue listening in.

“ _Oh shit, back up!_ ” Arin whispered, and the four voyeurs scooted away from the door as the two enormous aliens turned toward the ship’s opening, coming in from the bright California sunlight outside. Dante and SnarfLag looked between the four huddled near the door and the four sititng on the benches. Chris had been about to sit, but he froze with his butt in the air, hoping the aliens wouldn’t think they were up to anything.

“ **Wonderful! The nine of you look ready to begin!** ”

“Hey, um, quick question-?” started Suzy, but Dante shook his head.

“ **All questions will be answered in the Trial Tutorial.** ”

“- **Which will begin promptly!** ” exclaimed SnarfLag, interfacing with his arm computer. Suzy looked at Arin, worried.“ **Preparing teleportal calculations!** ”

“ **Connection secure,** ” Dante muttered. Arin’s head whipped from looking at Suzy over to Chris, a slightly panicked expression on his face, silently imploring Chris to  _do something_. “ **Teleportal initializing**.”

“ **Teleportal opening in ten-** ” Chris looked at Julian- “ **Nine. Eight.** ” -who threw his hands up in a ’ _what are you looking at ME for_ ’ expression. “ **Seven. Six.** ” He, Suzy, Matt, and Ryan looked positively sick. “ **Five. Four.** ” But their attention turned toward the door where- “ **Three. Two.** ” -Arin, Danny, Ding Dong, and Ethan had hopped to their feet, Arin pulling his fist back for a punch at Dante, Danny crouching down for a full-body pounce against SnarfLag, Ding Dong preparing to swing his laptop like a club at either or both, and Ethan’s leg disappearing behind the crowd as he booked it for the door. “ **One.** ”

 

Chris didn’t have long to take all that mess in, it was more of a snapshot as, in a flash, all nine gamers were in a completely different room than the locker room they’d just left. It was dark, and the image of his panicking friends was burned into Chris’s retinas until they began to adjust.

 

Paragraphs of white words appeared, floating in the air off to the right, illuminating the other players. Arin tried to read them aloud.

“Earth Module version two point one, uh, several minor aesthetic changes have been made to the game’s- FUCK!”

The words disappeared before Arin could finish. Dan laughed in spite of the darkness. “Changes to the game’s Fuck, huh?”

“ _Aesthetic_ changes to the game’s Fuck,” Suzy chimed in.

 

Ethan yelped as the lighting changed again- with a loud THOONK and an increasingly loud hum, five doors appeared in the darkness- two on one wall and one on each of the rest. ‘Door’ being a generous term in this situation. They were rectangles of light, about three feet wide and eight feet tall, each a different color, with something floating in the middle of the rectangle, about eye level. Each 'something’ was a two dimensional image, like the floating, glowing words had been, in colors either matching or complementary to the frame color.

Suzy gasped- her hand reflecting the glow of a yellow doorframe with a pink logo in the center- a stylized ball of yarn with cat ears and a little nintendo controller and cord for a tail. “Is that-? KKG?”

“Oh shit, SuperMega!” Matt called, sitting on the floor next to Ryan, who was more or less being dragged up off the floor by Julian. The slim editor slapped Ryan’s shoulder repeatedly, proving the bigger boy was still alive by thoroughly pissing him off.

“Ow! Ow-ow-ow MATT! F- _QUIT IT!_ ”

“Don’t be mad, dude,” Matt laughed, momentarily basking in the recognition of having their channel logo appear aboard a literal alien spaceship- as were Arin and Danny, who were looking at each other with wide eyes and big grins, pointing at their own doorway logo.

 

“They even got the little Grump Heads in there?”

“Holy shit dude, Team Grumps!!”

“Huh,” murmured Chris, looking at the blocky purple letters reading 'Oney Plays’ floating in the red-orange doorway. “S'cool, I guess.”

“Be more impessive if it was one of your drawings,” said Ding Dong, and Julian laughed in agreement. “Could you imagine?”

“I  _am!_ ” Julian wheezed.

“I mean, not to disregard everything that made us doubt this,” said Danny, “but I’m really excited!”

“Hell yeah, dude!” Arin cheered. “Gaming with aliens!”

 

“So do we go in?” asked Ethan, having already approached his respective door (the royal blue one with the most detailed logo of the five).

“So this uh,” asked Julian, looking around at the other dimly-illuminated Youtubers. “This is goodbye?”

Suzy tugged Arin by the collar down to kiss Arin on the cheek. “Bye, babe!”

“Later, Sooz,” Arin replied, giving his wife a hug.

“No hug for me?” asked Danny, and Suzy cheefully hugged him, too, before running off to her respective door.

“You gonna be okay, Ryan?” asked Julian, patting the younger man on the shoulder.

“Yeah, no problem,” said Ryan, though he didn’t sound  very confident. “Come on, Matt!”

“I’m  _coming!_ ” Matt squealed, giving his own joke a couple of pity laughs as the two of them headed toward their own red door/blue logo combo.

“Guess we oughta go too, huh?” Chris looked to his co-hosts. Julian nervously groomed his mustache. Ding Dong seemed to wilt where he stood, but the two of them nodded.

It was finally time to play. With friends.


	8. Human Ingenuity

It was quiet without them.

Quiet and dark.

But very clean, if you ignored the stink they brought with them.

Chris cautiously stepped through the door, disturbing the hologram logo in the center and making his way into the hall. He’d never been this _aware_  of his surroundings before. It was… eerie. A long, thin hallway stretched away from him, black tile glowing with the warm red-orange and purple lights of the door but fading fast into total darkness only meters away.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Ding Dong, pushing past him and sauntering down the hallway at a casual pace. “This is like the start menu, you gotta keep going.”

“The computer tell you that?” asked Chris, scooting down the hall after him, a hand-wringing Julian close behind.

“No, it’s obvious- we just saw the patch notes, we picked our teams, now we’re goin’ to the tutorial.”

“ _Like a veeedio gaaame,_ ” Julian observed, loosening up a bit.

“Yeah, exactly,” Ding Dong replied. “I mean, I could give the computer a shot, but I doubt they’re gonna have a compatible internet system, or like, power outlets? For this thing?”

He pulled the laptop charger out of his pocket and dropped it on the floor of the hallway, where it clattered to a stop. Chris bent down and swept it up as he passed it by.

“ _Dude!_  Don’t litter!”

“You’re gonna get a fine!”

“We’re on a spaceship populated solely by assholes and murderers,” Ding Dong retorted. “I don’t really care about keeping their halls clean.”

 

The hall opened up, not in width but in height. The room they entered stretched about two stories tall, the ceiling washing the room with cold gray light. Once the three of them entered, a gentle digital  _ping_  sounded, and three sets of floor tiles lit up in different colors, squares made up of four disco-floor-esque tiles each, sitting in single file. A gentle, feminine voice rang out through the room.

“ **O-NEE EN-GEE. DEENG DAWNG. JOO-LEEN. Team O-NEE PLAYS. Please stand on the corresponding colored tile to receive your items.** ”

“Siri?” asked Ding Dong.

“ _Deeng Dawng,_ ” Julian imitated.

“What’s that bitch mean by ‘corresponding’?”

“ _Chris,_ ” Julian scolded. “Every woman is a bitch to you!”

“Yeah cuz I-” Chris started, cutting himself off. “That’s why I call 'em that, cuz they are!”

“ **Healing Potions are a necessary item in the upcoming trials.** ”

“ _Ding_ Dong!” Julian called, still frowning at Chris, but turning to Ding Dong, who had stepped on top of the tiles lit in red. A chunky looking 'broken heart’ made of red voxels floated in front of the very disinterested alien. “We weren’t ready yet!”

“Guess I’m the support class,” Ding Dong observed, accepting the two halves of the heart. He held one in each hand and glanced over them before they disappeared from his hands, reappearing at his waist, as if he had some sort of belt or holster under his red shirt.

“ **Each Potion item corresponds to a fellow Trial Teammate. They-** ”

“Wait! Wait- hang on!” Chris called, hopping on the orange square that matched his orange shirt. He looked up at the ceiling with an open-mouthed grin.

“ **Melee weapoiqueqewbv-…** ” Much to Chris’s glee, the feminine voice began to play two audio clips at once as a thick and ugly cricket bat made of gray voxels appeared before him.

“Julian come on! Get on the square!”

“But I don’t know what I’m doing- I wanna hear the tutorial!”

“We’ll figure it out later!” Chris called, the bat teleporting to his back. “Square up!”

 

Julian huffed and stomped to his own purple square, wincing and covering his ears as the third audio clip kicked in, the volume increasing and echoing through the room. A mass of black voxels appeared, and Chris honestly had no idea what it was, but he was too happy with how they’d already beaten the aliens’ system with human impatience to worry about how they’d have to learn to use their respective 'items’.

“CHRIS!” Ding Dong shouted, pointing to the other end of the room, where the space seemed to narrow into another hallway. Kicking off the tiles into a jog, Chris led the way to the door- the cacophony fading behind them as the three moved down into the dark hallway, on to the next room.

 

The hall opened to another darkly tiled space, but was divided in the middle by a platform attached to either wall. The leading edge of the platform glowed orange, and was a good meter or so above their heads- even including Chris’s height.

“Are we in, like, a goth kitchen?” asked Julian, inspecting the tile below their feet and along the walls. “It’s way too clean in here.”

“Goth bathroom, maybe,” Chris laughed. “I’ve never seen a kitchen this clean.”

“You  _would_ , if you ever bothered to clean one,” sassed Ding Dong. He looked up at the ledge. “Get up there.”

“Wh-How? It’s like, a whole… five feet up there!”

“Eh, give or take,” Julian added in.

“We’re in space, just try it.”

“How do  _you_  know we’re in space?” asked Chris, shrugging his shoulders to adjust the lumpy weapon starting to dig into his back.

“I guess you guys can’t feel the gravity difference,” Ding Dong sighed. “We’re definitely nowhere on Earth, though.”

“Why don’t  _you_ do it?”

“It’s  _orange_! They obviously want  _you_  to do it.”

“Fine, I’ll give it  _one shot_ , but if you make me look stupid…”

“ _How would I be making you look stupid?_ ”

“You look stupid enough as it is,” Julian giggled.

“FINE! UGH!” Chris growled. With a grunt, he pushed off the floor and, to his surprise, flailed through the air, catching the orange ledge with his arms- and his face. “Ow! Jesus!”

“You okay, Chris?” Julian called as Chris pulled himself all the way up to the ledge.

“Yeah, there’s nothin’ up here, though.” Chris complained, looking across the unexpectedly empty tile of the platform before leaning over the ledge again.

“Well we made  _some_  progress,” Ding Dong pointed up at the ledge. “It’s purple now.”

“Oh no, no way,” Julian gave a nervous laugh. “Unless they set the gravity to like, negative numbers.”

“You saw how high Chris jumped,” said Ding Dong, gesuring upward, an incredulous smile on his face. “You don’t even have to get  _that_  far, Chris could catch you.”

“Why do you keep volunteering me for things?” Chris called down over the ledge. “Don’t you know what happens when people try that? They get their arms ripped out! …S'hilarious.”

“I can heal you if that happens! I think. I mean, they gave me potions for that.”

Julian thought for a moment, then pulled the mass of voxels out from behind his back. “Hang on. I wanna try something.”

 

…


	9. Skip the Tutorial

“JULIAN!” Ding Dong shrieked.. He pulled himself up the now-red edge of the platform, the middle of his face darkened with a patch of soot. “WHAT THE HELL?”

Julian coughed, putting his arms down from his victory pose and pushing himself up to a sitting position. “Rocket jump,” he answered, matter-of-factly.

 

“YOU EXPLODED!”

“Hey, it worked though,” said Chris, pointing past Julian toward an orange ring that had appeared farther down the platform. “There's a thing-”

“YOU TOOK A CHUNK OUT OF THE FLOOR! You lost your _weapon_ , you buffoon!”

Julian started to wheeze- “ _You didn't know what it was either!_ ”

“IT'S NOT FUNNY!”

“Says the guy wearing blackface,” Chris giggled, standing up and dusting himself off.

Ding Dong was steaming, but Julian smiled at him. “Come on, Ding Dong. Nothing- nothing uh... “Nothing pained, nothing gained”, right? And! You coulda healed me if I messed up.”

“ _“Nothing ventured”_ ,” Ding Dong corrected, but he seemed to calm down; his nublets were less tense, downturned lips dry, loose, a huff of a sigh seeping between sharp, widely-spaced teeth.

 

Another loud, electronic jingle echoed through the room as Chris touched the ring, followed by the rumble of another opening door- this one appearing in the wall beside them instead of the far end.

“D'you think there's gonna be more tutorial after this?”

“Well you _gotta_ get another shitty exploding box, Julian!” Chris laughed.

“I hope there's no more tutoorial- it's already boring.”

“Yeah, it looks like old Newgrounds in here.”

“ _Yeah, it smells like Egoraptor in here,_ ” sassed Ding Dong, to Chris's delight.

 

“ _Aww, come on!_ ”

The other side of the door was much like the side they'd just come from, black tile, dim lighting, red and orange and purple highlights spaced thereabouts. Julian sighed and turned to the nearest purple ledge. “Yeah, you're right, Ding Dong, it's boring already.”

“Julian,” Ding Dong hummed, already wandering toward a big, red button on the wall. “This might just be _it,_ actually. I mean they're technologically capable of a lot more, but-”

“I WANN A SKIP THE TUTORIAAAAL!” Chris shouted, addressing the ceiling and throwing his fists in the air- then thinking better of it and grabbing the chunky bat from behind his back, hoisting it over his head. His call echoed through the space, reverberating softly against the dull tile surroundings, gradually fading into the gentle 60 Hz mains-hum of the ship around them.

The floor shuddered beneath Chris's feet as he heard the grinding of a new door opening- with a clunk, the button disappeared under Ding Dong's tentative fingertips- Julian wavered, attempting to regain his balance as the platform he'd climbed to seemed to sway beneath him.

“ **Your request has been unanimously approved by the viewing council.** ”

 

“ _Oh shit,_ ” Ding Dong whispered, wincing, skyward-turned eyes darting from corner to corner, but Chris grinned, confidently resting his pixel-bat on his shoulder like a Final Fantasy character.

“We're being _viewed?_ ” asked Julian, joining Ding Dong in upward attentiveness.

“Well yeah, they're Let's Players, of course they're watchin' us,” said Chris. “Sounds like they're doin' uh, what's the uh. “Text in your vote for your favorite-” uh...”

“Think they're gonna vote one of us off the island?” Julian referenced.

“If they stop us for a confession cam, I'm gonna give 'em a piece of my mind.”

“You were genna do that anyway,” said Chris, looking around for the door that must have opened. “What with them killin' everybody you know and love, right?”

“Yeah, that,” the slug-like alien warbled, sounding defeated.

 

“ **Team ONEY PLAYS. Prepare for your true challenge.** ”

The rumbling and grinding began anew, and the tiled walls and ceiling folded away, revealing themselves to be as thin as paper. The platform Julian had been standing on folded itself under him, dropping him unceremoniously to the ground. A wave of dust kicked itself up as the floor tiles shimmied themselves under what couldn't possibly be anything but dirt- Chris knelt down and took a handful of it, looking up as light poured in from the widening gaps in the folding ceiling. It wasn't sunlight, but it felt just as bright after the dim tutorial. And, between him and that light were thousands of distant, tiny leaves rustling in the wind- a tree. A _massive_ tree.

 

“What the shit?” asked Chris, leaning further and further back to try to make sense of the scale.

“It's a simulation,” Ding Dong explained, though he didn't sound too confident, himself. “There's a ceiling and everything, they just designed a skybox.”

“Ding Dong?” called Julian, from his shallow crater in the dirt. “I think I could use that healing now.”

“Oh shit, Julian-” Ding Dong stuttered. He hadn't noticed Julian's plight, but he made no hesitation as he pulled one half of the chunky heart-shaped pile of pixels from his hip and offered it to his human friend. “...How do we even use this?”

“I'unno, mine exploded.” Julian coughed and sat up, joining Chris in looking at the dancing shadows of the leaves, far, far above them. “Where even are we?”

A breeze blew by the three of them, setting nearby pieces of scenery to sway- a patch of grass thrice Chris's height. Rows and rows of neck-level blue flowers and their thick green foilage. A pair of thick-stemmed flowers, tall and sturdy as streetlamps. A trio of little red shoots, palm-sized green leaves catching the wind and setting them to shiver.

“JULIAN!” Chris shouted, pointing at the shoots, a big dumb smile spreading across his face.

A big dumb smile which spread to Julian as he realized what they were.

“Oh! It's Pik-piks.”

 

“It's _fucking_ Pikmin, Julian! _Gawd!_ ”

 


	10. Pikem'n

“How real is this dirt, d'ya think?” Chris muttered, letting it sift through his fingers.

“Don't eat it,” Ding Dong warned, and Chris threw down the rest of the dirt in dismay.

“NO! URGH!” Ding Dong laughed and Julian giggled as Chris gave an exaggerated pout. “Why ya gotta put words in my mouth?”

“Don't you mean 'put dirt in your mouth'?”

“Come on, I got it bad enough with Julian trying to eat things he shouldn't.” Ding Dong gestured a thumb over his shoulder toward Julian, who, conveniently, was attempting to discreetly remove the half-heart healing item from his mouth.

 

“How do you use this thing, anyway?” he asked, closing one eye and widening the other to give it a closer look. “Feels like glass. Is it like a potion?”

“I dunno, probably,” Ding Dong muttered, taking it back to look at it again, himself. He attempted to twist it in half but didn't seem to be making any progress.

“Give it here,” offered Chris.

“Your hands are dirty.” But Ding Dong handed it over anyway. With a HURGH of effort, Chris gave it his best pickle-jar-opening squeeze.

“Nothing.”

“Good try though, I could feel it from here.”

“I don't want you _feeling my tries,_ Julian,” Chris grumbled, tossing it back to Ding Dong, who sighed and tossed it over his own shoulder to Julian, who fumbled for it- the object slipping neatly through his fingers and hitting the ground, where it shattered into a cloud of red smoke.

 

“Julian!” exclaimed Ding Dong, backing away from the cloud and covering his mouth.

“Sorry!” Julian coughed, fanning away the fumes and stumbling away from the chunky shattered pieces- each collectively glowing with a digital light before fading away. “I tried to catch it!”

“Wait, Julian!” Ding Dong leaned in as the smoke began to clear. He took Julian's cheek in his hand and pulled him closer.

“ _Not here,_ ” Julian mumbled, a goofy smile tugging at his mustache.

“They're gone now,” Ding Dong muttered, his eyes darting over Julian's face. “How do you feel?”

“I mean, I'm alright, I guess.”

“Did you see them, Chris?”

“See what?”

“The little plus signs! They were just... Floating off of Julian's head?”

“Sounds stupid when ya put it that way,” Chris sassed.

“I know,” Ding Dong moaned, letting go of Julian. “Just forget it.”

“Well, if it's a healy thing, that's what's supposed to happen, right?” asked Julian, yawning.

“Don't tell me you're tired already.”

“Naw. Feels like I just woke up, actually.”

“Maybe that healing thing actually works! Hit me with it!” Chris demanded, tugging Ding Dong's arm like a toddler.

“You're not injured! It'd be a waste!”

“What if I'm sick?”

“In the head?” asked Julian.

“Yeah, exactly!”

“No!” Ding Dong pulled his arm away and pointed out into the oversized wilderness. “Look, if we're being watched, they're gonna get impatient pretty soon. We oughta get moving.”

 

Julian was the first to move, drawing cautiously closer to the red, leafy shoots sticking out of the ground nearby. “Since I played the original, should I be the one to pick 'em?”

“It's all you, Julian.”

“Okay...” said Julian, flexing his fingers and taking a deep breath.

“Stop messin' around! Pick 'em!”

“ 'Zat why they call 'em Pick-men?” Ding Dong mused, smirking.

Julian reached down and grasped the first sprout. He gave it a test tug, then glanced over his shoulder at the other two. “Does this read as weirdly sexual to anybody else?”

“JUST PULL IT!” Chris roared, cricket-bat in hand.

Julian panicked, jolting backward and pulling the red pikmin out of the loose dirt, suplexing it as he lost his balance and fell over. And it was a Pikmin- just like in the game. It stumbled to its feet and acted dizzy for a moment before looking up expectantly at Ding Dong and Chris, vibrating with nerves. It was bigger than Chris thought it would be: the flag-like leaf atop its head reached his chest level, its pointy shnoz at perfect blowjob height- disregarding the fact it had no mouth.

 

“Whoa,” said Chris, reminding himself that it was born literally seconds ago- and that it was a real, tangible representation of a cool Nintendo game character, “ 'E's real!”

“Help?” Julian whimpered, and the pikmin jumped into action- scurrying up behind his head and trying to lift him by the shoulders. He wasn't making much progress.

“Oh hey, he follows orders,” Ding Dong observed, watching the little red creature.

“I _meant_ you guys.”

“Nah, you just gotta pick the other two outta the dirt- they'd be able to lift you then.”

“Yeah, three sure is better than one, isn't it,” Julian sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Oh shit,” whispered Ding Dong, reaching down and grabbing Julian's arm, his eyes wide, looking off toward the other side of the space where two tree roots came together to make a narrow pass. “Maybe not.”

Chris looked up, too, readying his bat with a gasp. Trundling out of the pass were three ugly fucks, the two-toed, muppet-faced turnip critters from the games- googly eyestalks and all. “Aw, what's a game without enemies, huh?”

“Uh, Katamari?”

“Marble Blast.”

“Ummm, Super Monkey Ball?”

“Truck Simulator.”

“That _wasn't_ a real question,” Chris grumbled, starting to realize how big the incoming sock puppets really were.

“Well, it wasn't a very good hypothetical one.”

“ _I'll give you a good hypothetical,_ ” he growled, grabbing Julian's other arm and pulling him to his feet. “Would you rather be eaten by these things or _FUCKIN' DO SOMETHING?_ ”

“Well that's not very good either, to be honest.” Julian dusted himself off, grabbing the next pikmin sprout.

“Yeah, good luck you guys,” said Ding Dong, confidence withering. “I'll heal 'ya. I've got... half a heart left.”

“You had half a heart all along, Ding Dong,” Chris couldn't help but rhyme, groaning at his own joke. “...I can't wait for these things to eat us, actually.”

 


	11. Pitch Perfect

“I mean, they're probably not real,” Julian reasoned.

“I _guarantee_ you they're real enough to kill us,” insisted Chris, kicking off the dirt floor to take the creatures on, himself- “Hopefully they're real enough f'rus to kill!”

 

“WAIT!” Julian shouted, and Chris obediently skidded to a halt.

He rounded on Julian, his voice rumbling with anger- “WHAT??”

“You can't just attack the middle one!” Julian garbled. “You gotta, s-Strategy! You gotta separate 'em!”

“Y'can't lemme just smack one an' see what happens?” asked Chris, still pissed off.

“Can't we just let you kill yourself?” asked Ding Dong, dripping with sarcasm. “See wha' happens?”

“Fuck's sake! Fine! I'll...” Chris looked around, trying to think strategy. “Fucking... Flank 'em?”

“If you can get the one on the left to follow you,” Julian squinted across the sunny field, pausing to tug the second pikmin sprout out of the ground (thankfully keeping his balance this time). “Then the pikmin'll have more time to do damage.”

“ _Quit making sense, Julian!_ ”

 

Chris started off again, this time taking a hard left around the inner border of the arena. The leftmost muppet wiggled its upper lip, eyestalks wobbling back and forth before catching sight of its quarry- it got a couple of steps in toward Chris before he leapt at it, landing on its humpback between its googly-ass eyes and jumping off again, knocking it back for a moment but thoroughly capturing its attention. It waddled after him as he used his momentum to run back the way he came, its fanged mouth dribbling copious amounts of ooze.

“NOW WHAT?” He called, the creature following him back around.

Ding Dong's eyes blew wide and he skittered backwards, smacking into the black wall of the tutorial room. “DON'T BRING IT BACK _HERE_ , ASSHOLE!!”

“Ah shit-” muttered Julian, pulling the third pikmin free but keeping it in his hand. He reeled back, chucking the little humanoid vegetable into the air- it flew in a sharp arc, landing on the spotted mushroom beast's back.

 _Ploonk! Ploonk! Ploonk!-_ Julian's pikmin started attacking the much larger monster, which slid to a halt, kicking a cloud of dirt into the air. Chris coughed, stumbling out the other side of the cloud. A flash of red drew his attention upward where the other two pikmin cartwheeled through the air, the sound of more hollow thunks following shortly after they disappeared down into the dust. “Ha'fuck,” he huffed, turning to look at the other two tuber-beasts as they lumbered around, seeming to finally take notice of the kerfuffle on the other side of the field. “Uh...” He looked back at the dust cloud, trying to gage how the fight was going.”Sheeeit.”

“CHRIS!” He heard Ding Dong shriek, but he didn't turn back. He had to distract the other two now, right? He wanted to shout as much over his shoulder, but actually running instead of pushing buttons was really exhausting and he was still out of breath from the first dash. He wondered if he had some kind of stamina meter that was close to running out, or if this was more of a turn-based world with- he didn't manage to finish the thought, remembering what he was running towards. The two galumphing beasts grumbled and moaned like fungal cows, and Chris, mustering up the rest of his lung contents into a battle cry, decided to test his wonky cricket bat.

 

As the dust cloud cleared, the bulborb that Chris had sent straight to them bucked Julian's pikmin off of its back, and the three stunned vegemen lay strewn across the dirt floor. The drooling beast regained its senses, moist muppet mouth opening wider to vore the nearest pikmin- Julian leapt up and gave the monster a sharp smack across the snout- “ _Bitch!_ ” -grabbing his trio of pikmin off the ground as he retreated to a safe distance, the tiny beings coming to their senses and following after. Ding Dong seemed to regain his composure as the bulborb warbled in pain, again stunned by the attack.

“Julian,” Ding Dong sounded quite impressed, “You're doing good- it's about half health.”

“Half past health?” asked Julian, sweating and panting but smiling regardless. “Yeah, these things aren't that big a deal when you get used to 'em. HUP-!”

Julian grabbed the nearest pikmin and heaved it overhand at the red bulborb, hitting it square in the spots- and the other two pikmin were close behind with two more speedy throws.

“You're really good at that, Julian,” complimented Ding Dong.  
“Would you say I'm a good _pitcher?_ ” Julian smiled, elbowing Ding Dong in the arm.

“I mean,” the pale alien murmured, one hairless eyebrow rising in confusion. “Literally yeah, but..?”

“Oh, didn't uh, didn't _catch_ that pun, huh?”

“I mean you were literally pitching them-”

“I also like to top.”

“Oh.”

 

A cry and a crash echoed across the arena, and the pair of game developers looked up- just in time to see one of the two other bulborbs fall in half, the two mammoth pieces collapsing to the ground. The third screeched and stumbled away in a panic, revealing Chris, weapon raised above his head, a wide, child-like grin on his face. He shouted something across the arena, but neither of them could quite hear.

Another cry, and the bulborb that the pikmin had been fighting fell to the ground, defeated. The three pikmin scrambled down from its back and started struggling to lift it.

“Two down, one to go,” Ding Dong observed, watching the frightened bulborb attempting to escape into the tree roots. Julian whistled, and his three minions snapped to attention, dashing into formation behind him. He grabbed one of them, lifting the squirming vegetable to his shoulder level.

“ _I'm on it._ ”

 


	12. NEVER Split the Party

Chris waved and yelled some more, but it was clear Ding Dong and Julian weren't hearing him.

“COME _ON!_ ” he yelled, pointing his weapon (now confirmed to be a really shitty-looking sword) off down the hall the big stompy monsters had come from, but they chased down the last beastie instead of ignoring it for the goal- at least, Chris assumed the goal must be this way. He couldn't see much beyond the thicket of shoulder-height flowers and overly-tall grass in the valley created by the tree roots and dirt cliffs, sun-dappled and rustling in the breeze even though they were in an enclosed room in a spaceship.

Chris pouted, watching Julian throw his red pikmins at the last big ol' spotty critter. He didn't know what he expected, they were always on his ass about completionism in games. Theoretically because it was what the viewers wanted, but seriously, who came to their channel to see them finish things? He paused, lowering his sword and scratching his brow. What _was_ the appeal to their channel, anyway?

A crackling sound shook him from his thoughts and he turned back to the flowers- just in time to see a figure disappear into the foliage, blue blossoms shuddering in its escape. Chris didn't remember an enemy like that in Pikmin, not to say Pikmin didn't have a ton of weird shit in it. Maybe he'd gone too far ahead of the team and trigg- _er, activated_ the next round of enemies? He crouched, sticking his sword to his back and tiptoeing into the brush.

 

“Where's the onion, anyway?” asked Julian, collecting his pikmin from where they'd been thrown when the final bulborb bucked them off.

“The onion?” mumbled Ding Dong. “Like the satirical newspaper or the flying pik-man house?”

“Yeah, I think they could uh, carry the halves of the one Chris killed. Grow some more pikmin, get us a bigger crew.”

“Where is Chris, anyway? He ran off.”

“Why doesn't he come 'n help us?” Julian underhanded his Veggie Tales rejects back up to monster's hump. “If his sword's so OP, he should be able'ta-”

“Shit, we should probably stay together. We'll be easier to kill if we're separated.”

“D'you really think they'll kill Chris first? It's his channel.”

Ding Dong got quiet, watching the beast keel over and the pikmin make their dismount. Julian sighed and scratched his beard, giving his depressed alien friend a once-over. He put his hand on Ding Dong's shoulder and steered him toward the remains of the bisected bulborb.  
“Come onnn, let's go fiiind 'im.”

 

Chris didn't think he was getting any closer at this speed, but he didn't want the thing or alien or person or whatever it might be to see him. He followed the sound of it deeper into the rubbery plant life until the area opened back up into another clearing- smaller than the last one, and decidedly empty of enemies. Unfortunately, that included the one he'd been following.

“Hello?” he called out, glancing around the grassy area. Much like the arena before, it was enclosed by a cliff and a tree root, but there wasn't another way out from here, just a big red plant bulb sticking halfway out of the ground to his left and a mossy circle made of stone just ahead. “Anybody here?”

He received no answer, and went about investigating the stone circle. As he drew closer, however, the red bulb leapt out of the dirt and hovered some distance above the ground with spinning, helicopter-like leaves. A quirky jingle played as long, skinny legs unfolded, stabilizing the bean with a tripod of its own making until it finally settled, towering far above Chris's head.

“Oh shit,” he muttered, looking up at it, and watching a couple of tiny, red-glowing seedlets pop out the top and slowly twirl their way down to the ground, embedding themselves in the dirt as they landed. He looked off in the direction he'd come, wondering if Ding Dong and Julian would realize where he'd gone and follow him. They probably had to, there wasn't much else to this level unless you wanted to try climbing the tree, and there didn't seem to be anything up that way anyhow.

Where the hell had that thing gone?

 

Like a bagel, the bulborb Chris attacked had been sliced unevenly, and Julian's pikmin had no problems lifting the smaller piece. Ding Dong made a disgusted grunt, an “Euullcch”, frowing at the goreless but morbid single leg and eyestalk hunk of deceased video game monster as the three critters scuttled away with it over their heads, off into the flowers that ruffled Julian's sweat-slick hair as he followed them in.

“Must be this way,” the Mexican muttered, narrowly avoiding being smacked in the face as a few stalks popped back up after being flattened by the pikmin and their prey. He laughed, pushing the flowers aside. “Feels like I need a machete to get through all this!”

“Why didn't Chris cut it down?” Ding Dong asked, working himself into another mild panic, hunching in on himself under the shallow canopy as he followed Julian through.

“I'unno, maybe his sword only works on enemies?”

“Well maybe. But if they have access to Pikmin surely they have Zelda, too.”

“Maybe it's just the Master Sword that can do that.”

“They wouldn't give us the _Master Sword_ ,” Ding Dong chided. “They would definitely keep it for themselves, it's such an icon.”

“Well there's the onion. And Chris! Hey!”

 

Chris didn't look up from the stone circle, staring long and hard at the carvings in the stones around the edges. It looked so real, like somebody had actually taken a chisel to it about a thousand years ago. There wasn't anything like this in Pikmin, was there? He leaned down and touched it, watching the runes glimmer under his fingertips. And, with the logic of standing around not getting anything accomplished and the extra push of an impulsive thought, Chris stood back up and jumped on it.

With a bright flash, and a barely audible scream from Ding Dong, Chris was gone.

 


	13. Back at the Ranch

Ding Dong shrieked, racing to the stone circle and inspecting it as fast as possible before collapsing to the grassy ground. “Ohhh my god,” he sighed in full-bodied relief. “It's a teleporter.”

Julian laughed, moseying up to Ding Dong's prone form with a grin on his mustachioed mug.

“What's so funny?” demanded the embarrassed alien.

“You-h-hou thought he got _vaporized_ or something?”

“Wh- didn't _you?_ He disappeared right in front of our faces in a flash of light after touching this thing on the ground-”

“Yeah, just like in Marbo-blas, remember?”

“Uh, Marble Blast?” he asked, realization dawning on his face.

“And MegaMan. And Banjo-Kazooie, and-” Julian began, counting the games off on his fingers.

“Oh sure, rub it in.” Ding Dong crossed his arms, folded nublets brushing the grass under his head. But Julian only smiled and offered him a hand, which he accepted after a brief moment of huffy hesitation.

 

“So where do you think it goes?” Julian asked, pulling Ding Dong back up and looking over the runes on the circular platform.

“I dunno. Seems to be one-way though, since Chris hasn't come back.”

“D'you think he'll need backup?”

“I mean, probably. It's a three-player challenge.”

“You oughta go on ahead.”

“Julian...” Ding Dong hummed, unsure, and Julian sputtered.

“He might need support! I mean, who knows what's over there-”

“Julian.” The alien smiled, his tone teasing, but Julian only seemed to get more riled up by it.

“It's okay! I gotta- I gotta get this Pikmin army up and running, strength in numbers-”

“Julian.”

“Don't worry about me, there's no more enemies here anyhow- _why are you looking at me like that?_ ”

“Buh-bye, Julian,” goofed Ding Dong, stepping into the circle of stone and teleporting away.

 

Ding Dong wasn't entirely sure he'd _gone_ anywhere at first, stepping off the stone into more grass and dirt under the cold, artificial sun- damn, he'd been spoiled by life on Earth! But a look around revealed tall stone cliffs in the distance beyond a large tree (smaller than the tree of the last area, but still pretty big by his standards), and to his right, a brilliantly colored and wildly painted wooden playground made of sailing ship parts.

No Chris, though- in fact, no sign of him. Perhaps he'd made it that far ahead- or he was dead- or Ding Dong had been transported to a different level than Chris... Honestly Ding Dong didn't know what to hope for. This place was so empty.

He pulled the laptop out from under his shirt and popped it open. Maybe...

 

Chris was bored already. He'd killed all the enemies and busted open all the chests and gotten weirded out by all the animated objects with eyeballs- he'd even gotten vored by a book and found a whole new tropical-ly ruins level! It was pretty, and wide open, and there was plenty of stuff to collect, but it was slow going, and he already felt like he'd seen it all before. Fuck these aliens and their “challenge”, he was practically soloing this shit.

At this point he was going to start climbing the mountains for entertainment. It would at least bide the time until Ding Dong and Julian showed up- if they did. If they would be able to find him; he was already lost, having passed the same ruined temple three or four times. Or were there three or four temples that all looked the same?  
And where had that other person gone?

 

“Poor idiots,” sighed Holly, sitting on the couch next to Ross, the two of them watching TV. All satellite-based channels had been wordlessly overridden by the Let's Players, and after watching the Game Grumps miraculously bust through the tutorial and seven “boards” (Danny's words) already and seeing Suzy beat the crap out of a few mercenaries with a bat to steal their surprisingly shitty guns, the couple had changed channels to check on Ross's friend Chris, only to see that each of the three members of OneyPlays had ended up in different levels.

“Why? What's up?” Ross asked, glancing between his wife, the TV, and the pigeon, Feathers, picking away at his fingers as he encroached on his territory (Holly's lap).

“Rookie mistake,” she gestured at the screen as the camera sat on Ding Dong sitting on his ass with his computer out and Julian, hustling back and forth between teams of red Pikmin as they carried monster chunks to the onion. “They split the party. Ya _never_ split the party!”

“Oh shit, chyer right.” hummed Ross. “Think they're gonna die?”

“Well considering they're only on level two- well, Ding Dong is. And they're this far behind even though they skipped the tutorial...”

“Shit, dude. And they were the only ones going in with a plan, too.”

The camera switched back to Ding Dong, still typing away, occasionally glancing up and around, as if the level hadn't been emptied already.

"We haven't even seen Chris yet," Holly murmured.

“This is boring, let's watch Markiplier.”

Holly nodded and went to the TV guide, but when she changed the channel to Markiplier's stream, the only image was a pink mustache in the center of a black screen, with the words _We'll be right back!_ in a white arc across the bottom, almost shaped like a smile. “Oh. Huh.”

“D'you think he's... dead?” Ross glanced over to Holly, who was giving Feathers a comforting scritch.

“I dunno! Odds are, considering how long it's been since the early access.”

Ross took a deep breath. “Okay. Let's go back to Game Grumps.”

 


	14. Bottom of the Barrel

“ _WOOHOO!_ ” whooped Arin, swinging across a bottomless pit to the next part of the path with the Hookshot he'd earned four boards ago, followed shortly behind by an equally cheery Dan, gliding elegantly across the gap with the cape he'd been gifted in board two. They'd made it to the ninth world already, and they'd only started a about an hour ago! The energy was still running high, the two of them fueled by the adrenaline of their best and worst adventures being brought to life. Even now they were in a ruined lab inspired by Sonic Boom, grappling around with the tree roots that criss-crossed the cracked stone ceiling and bouncing on big green buttons and springs that were, unfortunately, largely indistinguishable from each other.

 

Just now, Arin had collected a shiny pink upgrade to the bounce boots he'd earned in board three, so they now matched the pink Mega Man buster cannon on his right arm and his pink letter-A Super Mario cap. A floaty text box they'd skimmed through had told them about its Triple-jump ability, and by the looks of things, Arin had already forgotten. “Arin! Look up!” Dan called, and Arin's bearded chin flicked upward, brown and blond bangs bouncing beneath the brim of his hat as he searched the ceiling.

“Where?”

“The ledge!” Dan pointed upward to a marbled balcony high along the wall, a glowing metal chest barely visible over the side, sitting on top of it. “There's something?”

Arin grinned. “Hell yeah, more fuckin' robot parts.”

“I think we need them for a mission? Maybe we'll run into a person who we can trade with.”

“Or it's just a number and we're getting a high score for 'em- either way!” Arin charged toward the edge of the brassy platform, kicking off into the air, and kicking off again- his pink boots giving him an extra boost of height toward it- but not quite high enough. “Oh shit!”

“Triple jump!” shouted Dan, climbing down from the brass-inlaid ivory platform down to a vine-coated rusty one.

“Oh fuck, yeah!” Arin clicked his heels in the air one last time, the boots giving him one last bounce toward the platform, giving him enough clearance to make a rolling landing on the ledge. He leaned back over the side to look down at Dan, a goofy smile on his face. “Twiddle my scrote, dude!”

Dan cracked up. “Twiddle my _what?_ ”

“My scrote, dude! Twiddle it!”

 

Really, that had been par for the course on their adventure thus far, the two of them quipping up a storm, coming up with new and horrible catch phrases and gags, and (no longer contained by the boundaries of an approximately eleven to fifteen minute timetable) were finding themselves simultaneously breaking new ground in regards to their sense of humor and rapidly, perpetually running out of material.

“We are finding new lows,” giggled Dan, following the rusty path down to a wider platform under the main marble route. Arin hopped down after him, slowing his fall with the other hops provided by the boots. “We are scraping the bottom of the barrel!”

“We've busted through the bottom of the barrel and found another barrel, Dan-”

“It's barrels all the way down! Oh shit!”

As they landed on the square, copper-colored platform, a small swarm of robots appeared- doofy, doll-sized robots with singular green eyes, the same color as the buttons and springs and area lighting they'd been coming across all this time. Arin charged his buster cannon.

“Looks like one of those copper pans from those infomercials,” he noted, blasting a few bat-shaped bots out of the air.

“Gonna cook up some Pad Thai with all those robot parts, Arin?”

“D'you think aliens would eat that? Whoa,” Arin mused, quickly realizing his boots didn't have such great traction on the platform's surface. “Shit, it's nonstick! Just like the real pan!”

“I could go for some real Thai food, actually,” hummed Dan, scouting the perimeter of the pan platform, maintaining plenty of traction with his bare feet. “Do you think aliens _eat?_ ”

“ _They can eat my pussy!_ ” Arin called back, skating around and trying not to throw himself off the edge of the pan with his buster blasts. Dan scoffed, but he laughed in equal measure.

 

Danny honestly hadn't been doing much this whole time, preferring to let Arin take the lead. The pink-clad content creator was the better gamer anyway, it was only through a fluke on the Mario 3 board that Dan had gotten the cape he was wearing at all (Arin had missed the feather and, in an effort to grab it for him, Dan had collected it instead. Not that Arin would have been using it much anyway, what with the Hookshot and bounce boots to get around with). But Arin was the player, and Dan had resigned himself to the position of moral and emotional support, to keep Arin from going scrote-twiddling crazy on this alien spaceship. As such he made himself useful in other ways, scouting ahead, offering directions, looking for things outside Arin's range of vision...

Speaking of, even farther down into the bottomless bit below that they were gradually making their way into, Dan spotted the path they'd been expected to take all along, a few more gear-like platforms down, a classic Sonic-style speed track lined with (still the same glowing green) booster rings, springs, and robot parts twisted and turned its way from the direction they'd come, passing by this bonus robot fight and ending in the teleporter to the next board, a glowing circle of glass and steel that stood out from the mossy, patina-coated area around them. They could well have gotten though a lot faster if they hadn't gone sequence-breaking with the Hookshot, but Dan didn't regret the fun they were having with this path anyway.

“Hey, Arin!”

Dan turned around just in time to see it. A bird-legged bitch had spawned, one of those oval-shaped, two-cannoned robots recycled from an older Sonic game. Standing right in the middle of the arena, its cannons simmered with fading green energy. It wasn't until Dan's hair was brushed aside by the gust left in the wake of the energy bolts and something hot and wet and red splattered itself across his cheek and well-worn Rush t-shirt that Dan realized Arin had fallen to the ground, buster-equipped arm flopping to the floor a few feet away, decidedly separate from the rest of him.

 

 

Arin Hanson was dead.

 


	15. Xertz

“WHAT THE FUCK?” Ross yelped, jumping up and falling to a crouch in front of the TV. “ _WHAT THE FUCK!_ ”

“ _NOOO!_ ARIN!” Holly screamed, recoiling so hard it sent an angry Feathers fluttering to the back of the couch. “Danny! Where's Danny?”

“Shit, where _is_ Danny?” asked Ross, looking over the still-running video feed for any sign of the curly-haired musician.

“ _Arin,_ ” sobbed Holly, her hands tangled in her short, lavender hair. “Ross!!”

“Whoa-” Ross rolled back on his heels and fell to his rear, watching an enormous, pixel-blocky, flamingo-pink skull and crossbones icon cover the screen before shrinking itself down and settling itself in the lower left corner next to an equally pink-pixelled equals sign and number one.

“What does that mean?! Ross?”

 

Vvvt-Vvvt-Ping!

 

Both Ross's and Holly's phones rang out a notification. Ross ignored his, eyes still darting over the screen before him. “Arin's gone,” he observed. “ _Arin's gone-_ his _body's_ gone.”

But Holly wavered.

“Ohh, this is _not_ the time,” she warbled, tugging the phone out of her pocket and looking at the locked screen. “at-danny-avidan just posted a video? _Now??_ ”

“Danny!” Ross called, pointing at the television as Dan appeared there, climbing back up to the pan-like platform from the rusty gears below. “What's he doing?”

 

“ _H-hey, everybody. Um._ ”

“Ross. Come look at this.”

“What's he _doing?_ ”

 

“ _So, ah, no more Game Grumps. Or Starbomb. Uh, hah. NSP's a maybe, ha ha._ ”

“Ross. Ross?”

“Ohh don't fuckin' do it.”

 

“ _I- I wanna thank the lovelies. My parents. The other uh, the other Grumps. Suzy... Arin._ ”

“Oh nooo...”

“Danny? _Danny?!_ ”

 

“ _You know what? Fuck this. Fuck this robot, come on._ _Come on, bitch! Do your worst!_ ”

 

Holly dropped her phone in her lap, turning to the TV, where Dan was fighting the robot.

No weapons, fox only, final destination.

 

 

Ding Dong had finally figured out the onboard computer systems of the ship and had connected to the interior maps via the laptop. This whole place had been designed for the entertainment of the aliens living on board, so easy navigation and computer access was a must- Ding Dong was practically invited in, and _literally_ invited to join the Let's Player social site “Xertz”, where they all uploaded and shared their videos.

Turns out the Let's Players actually did Let's Plays. Huh.

Ding Dong had narrowed down the billions of beings and thousands of rooms on this ship down to just the three of them: himself in a surprisingly small and narrow room (in the grand scheme of things), Chris in the room literally directly below him, and Julian in the one immediately, literally behind him. These teleporter panels were both one way and very short range, it seemed. Zooming out, the computer allowed him to see further along in their projected path. Colored bright orange and clearly labeled OneyPlays, the name itself was a hyperlink leading to Xertz again, where their progress was being continuously streamed, and rated by the Let's Player site members.

And there was Chris, nearly a mile off the clearly marked path, climbing a mountain.

Ding Dong slapped a hand to his face and let it slide down his cheek. At least he'd run into the walls before finding any bottomless pits to fall into, though that could change in future levels, considering how big these boxes seemed to get.

Regardless, Ding Dong figured there must be other ways to get between levels. What if there was an emergency? What would the Let's Players have in mind if, say, there were a fire in this pure oxygen environment? There had to be some form of emergency exit, and if he could access it then maybe they could sequence break their way to the end, meet up with the other players from Earth, or even get into some of these recreational areas pictured in the gorgeous promotional photos on Xertz. Wow, they were nice. Based on video games, of course, but still nice.

A brown icon blinked in the room under Ding Dong, drawing his attention to it before he realized that this laptop was absolutely never meant for this kind of multi-window rendering and was currently baking his skinny thighs. He closed out of everything and shut it off, letting it cool on the stone floor beside him for a bit. This would need some more specific planning, and if he was in direct contact with Chris and Julian it would be so much easier...

 

Chris hadn't made it to the top of the mountain, but he'd managed to bash his face into the ceiling. To his credit, it was a clever illusion that looked quite thoroughly as if it continued into sky and mountain, leaving him very disappointed but only slightly sore. He shifted around the mountain until he could find somewhere to sit and turned back to the level below.

It was a lot smaller than he'd expected; there were three temples in all, one to the far left, one to the far right, and one in the center. Up here, Chris could start to see the boundaries of the room, though, enough to tell that the left and right temples weren't all there, just big fancy doors projecting forth from the walls. Maybe the center temple actually had stuff in it?

Now he wished his phone hadn't been brokeded back on Earth so he could call Julian and get the other two out here. Breaking up the team was a bad idea in retrospect, but it wasn’t like it was a conscious decision.

As he was mulling over whether to wait for the game dev duo, something down below caught his eye- something small and brown, skittering along the path around the temple. Chris gasped, nearly scooting off his precarious seat on the mountainside in his excitement. Down there was the reason he'd gone ahead in the first place: the mysterious figure he'd followed through the teleport panel.

 


	16. Checking In With The Boys

Chris kept peering over his shoulder to make sure he didn't lose track of the cowl-wearing shape as he climbed down the mountain, wondering whether there was fall damage here or not. If Ding Dong was here, he'd probably give Chris a speech about the reduced gravity and shit, but Chris had forgotten what little they'd established in the tutorial. Whatever the case, the sound of gravel dislodged by his climb clattering down the mountain set him on edge, quickening his pace in fear of losing track of the hooded figure as it seemed to investigate the ring of footprints he'd left around one of the palm trees in his previous boredom.

If he called out to it, would it stop? It looked like a scared deer, glancing around at the tropical fantasy landscape before looking back down at Chris's tracks. It would probably scream and run off, Chris figured, if it was that nervous about life in general. He did want to have a word with it, though- they were here for a reason after all and getting more info on the situation might make getting separated from the rest of the team worth it... He squinted, scratching his chin in thought as he weighed the pros and cons of continuing to chase the hooded figure when, “Wh-oh shit-” he lost his footing, his chin-scratching hand not fast enough to find a stabilizing handhold on the rocky wall.

Chris fell the last few feet to the grassy ground, kicking up a cartoonish cloud of dust as he landed on his ass with an audible _whud_. He hoped the figure hadn't overheard, but as he stood up with an involuntary groan, rubbing his sore behind, he turned, just in time to see it looking right at him. That is to say, the deep black void of the hood's interior was facing his way, the being's entire form standing still as death. (Really the only thing that kept it from being terrifying was the mood of the rest of the world they were in; just over the being's shoulder, on the steps of the center temple, was a snake folded into a pair of pants that had tried to sell Chris new ways to swing his sword. Honestly, if the grim reaper was going to show up anywhere in this game, it wouldn't be somewhere like this, right?)

But, as expected, the figure ducked its head and darted away down the path. Chris jumped to his feet and gave chase. “Wait!” he wailed, pulling his chunky sword out from behind his back. “I just wanna talk!”

The creature in the hood glanced over its shoulder once, and kept running.

Chris wasn't fast enough to catch up, but he at least saw it leap up the steps of the faux-temple to the right before he lost sight of it entirely.

“Fuck!” he exclaimed, falling to his knees on the path. “Rock climbing is hard.”

 

“This is so fucking primitive,” Ding Dong muttered to himself, using a particularly sharp rock he'd found to scratch arrows into the stone cliffs leading in the direction he was going, following Chris's path of of destroyed chests and slain monsters. Hopefully Julian would be able to use this to find his way once he was done with the pikmin situation.

Ding Dong hadn't gone this long without human contact since before his arrival to Earth. He hadn't expected to miss Julian and Chris this much, hadn't factored it in when leaving Julian behind. Now he was feeling cold, and anxious, and kind of sick, and the warmth of the laptop was no replacement. Who knew how far ahead Chris could be now, being the main fighter of the group, or whether he was dead now, having had no support for so long. The alien slug was hesitant to say he was desperate to catch up, but with no way to teleport back to Julian it was becoming clear he needed to find Chris.

Leaving the pirate ship playground behind, Ding Dong made his way through a bee-themed laboratory (scratching arrows on every surface that would let him), scrambled up a ramp, wandered through an overgrown passage up to a large green book on a pedestal. If memory served, this would be the teleporter to the next world, which, Ding Dong already knew, meant the room directly below him- at least, in terms of the layout of the enormous ship they were on. Hoping the destruction Chris left behind was an indication that his vandalism would stay, Ding Dong left a few more arrows pointing at the pedestal, set down the rock he'd been using to scrawl them, and flipped open the book's front cover.

 

Julian huffed, wiping his brow. Already he had a sizeable crew of red pikmin following him around, but now he looked at the tiny stone circle his friends had already gone through and wondered if it was big enough to take them all.

“Are you guys even gonna follow me through it?” he rhetorically asked, glancing down at one of his many minions, who glanced up at him. It didn't seem to understand, but gave him a questioning look, tilting its head like a dog. “I'm not gonna have to throw you all in there, am I? I'm already beat.”

Honestly, pulling pikmin was a job in and of itself, like pulling particularly deep-rooted weeds in a garden. Repetitive, strenuous. The sun wasn't as bright or as hot as on Earth, but Julian was still sweating through his purple shirt. At least pikmin didn't judge, and they likely wouldn't care if he took five before trying to throw them anywhere.

"Eh, they won't miss me for another five minutes."

 


	17. Each Other's Nerves

“ _CHRIS!!_ ”

Chris heard the shout and pushed himself up, searching, bleary-eyed, for the source of the sound. Letting himself sit down made him realize just how tired he was, so he figured it wouldn't hurt to chill out for a bit before following after the hooded figure again, and must have ended up dozing. It took another call for him to turn his attention upward to the center temple, where a small white figure was sliding down the slope- red shirt flapping in the wind. He shook his head, sitting up to make sure of what he was seeing.

“CHRIS!” It was Ding Dong! Chris planted the blade of his sword in the dirt and pulled himself up, dusting himself off with his free hand and watching Ding Dong make his way down the side of the temple, at first straight down the sheer upper wall before reaching the upper path and zig-zagging down to ground level. The alien panted for breath, finally coming to a stop in front of Chris, giving the human a quick once-over, his expression turning from concern to relief. “You're okay, thank god.”

“Where the fuck have you guys been?” asked Chris, nonchalant. Ding Dong's expression folded. “Where's Julian?”

“Where have _we_ been?”asked Ding Dong, disgusted. “You're the one who ditched us, Chris! I don't know why I even bothered-”

“I ditched you for _the thing_! And you just missed it again!” Chris tugged his sword out of the ground and gestured up at the faux temple, where the hooded being had gone. Ding Dong steamed.

“- _Interrupting me! Fucking-_ I was happy to see you were _alive_ , asshole! Sorry I got so caught up trying to _find you_ and _get us further in the game!”_ Honestly, Chris knew exactly what it took to get Ding Dong riled up. Without Julian, (and even with him, on occasion,) the two of them had the potential to devolve into screaming matches at the drop of a hat. _“_ And now you're chasing _random shit_ like, we're not supposed to be _a team_ or anything! Did you even think to _wait for us?_ Where are you going _now!?_ ”

Chris hadn't been ignoring Ding Dong, he'd just been looking up at the faux-temple they were standing in front of, and now he was walking towards it. “It wants us to follow it.”

“ _WHAT DOES?_ ”

“The thing!” Chris kinda wanted to see how long he could keep Ding Dong going.

“ _WHAT THING!?_ ”

Okay, this bit was getting old. “It's a fuckin'... alien in a brown cloak, I dunno. It went this way.”

Ding Dong got quiet. “Brown..?” He pulled the laptop out of his shirt and popped it open, suddenly very interested in something on the screen. “Chris... Do you think our game's been invaded?”

“Like Dark Souls? Nah. It's too scared of us.”

“Okay, _maybe_ we can follow it,” mused Ding Dong. “But you gotta let me do some planning.”

“Sure,” said Chris, pulling himself up the first step of the faux-temple.

“And we have to leave a trail for Julian. He's still working on the pikmin thing.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Chris hummed, looking up at where Ding Dong had come from. “How?”

“I dunno, use your sword?”

“If y' say so,” said Chris, readying his blocky blade. “How's Julian doing, anyway?”

“I...Don't know, actually. According to the map, he's still in the Pikmin level... And he's not moving.”

 

 

A sea of green leaves and white blossoms wavered gently in the wind, attached to long stems, attached to little humanoid creatures, surrounding him, a vigil as he lay against the tree, looking up at the sunny, blue artificial sky. “It's as good a place as any, dude,” he muttered, loosely scratching at his thick, dark beard with his free hand, the other tangled in the red shirt of his companion.

“Don't you fucking dare, Ryan.” Blue eyes, real, grounding.

“I don't got a choice, do I?”

“We're _almost_ to level ten. Nice round number- they wouldn't make us do any more than that!”

“Matt.”

“Don't. Fucking. _Leave_ me, you _ass_ hole!”

The deep bruise on his middle was more visible than ever, purple enough to be black, spreading from just above his shirt collar down to the waistband of his basketball shorts, revealed as Matt's thin hands grasped two fistfuls of Ryan's blue shirt.

“They said they could heal you, didn't they?”

Ryan scoffed. “So much for that, I guess.”

“Just... Get up, man. We're almost there. Like, seriously, the portal-”

“Matt.”

“-Right over there, dude, _I can't drag your fat ass-_ ”

“Matt!”

“ _RYAN!_ ”

Matt sobbed. Angry, regretful, tears finally finding their way down his bony cheeks. Ryan breathed. “Don't be mad, dude.”

 

Matt's hands landed on the grassy ground as Ryan's body became royal blue light and flickered away, like the end of an old VHS tape. Around him, the sea of equally blue pikmin shuddered, their bodies growing pale, leaves and buds glowing with blue light, shimmering like candles.

Matt didn't have anything to say to them, their master was Ryan.

And Ryan Magee was gone.

 


	18. Progress

 

 

“If he cries, I'm out.” Ross frowned at the screen, watching Danny sit on the copper platform. “I'm turning it off.”

“Ross-” started Holly, concerned but determined. Ross fiddled with the remote, jamming the power button with no response from the TV.

“No! I'm not gonna watch my friends suffer like this.”

“Ross, we've got to send him a video message back!” Holly tapped on her phone, ignoring Feathers as he cooed angrily and strutted along the back of the couch and across her shoulders. “We've got to let him know we're here, that we still care!”

“You do that, I'm changing the channel.” With a stutter of digital footage, the video swapped to the SuperMega stream, with a little blue skull and crossbones in the bottom corner. “Oh... Oh, no...”

“Why are all the comments on this video the letter _F?_ ”

 

Chris looked up at the sky, where whirling, arching rings twisted about in the purple, starry expanse with a crescent moon far above. Bright beige clouds masked the horizon and disguised the ground far below the blue-tiled tower on which he stood, making it seem as if he was on the edge of a bottomless pit.

Meanwhile, Ding Dong had his eyes glued to the monitor of his laptop. The box that illustrated the room they were in was a lot taller than it was long, and they seemed to be right in the middle of it. “I wouldn't want to fall here,” he muttered in Chris's direction. “Even with reduced gravity it's a long way down.”

“Uh, _yeah,_ I have _eyes,_ asshole,” sassed Chris, putting on a scratchy, falsetto voice. “ _Oh, la-di-dee, I'm gonna go pokin' around in the faert clouds, better jump from this-_ fuckin', uh, _fifty meter drop!_ ”

“It's not _that_ high,” chastised Ding Dong, lowering his laptop screen to give the level ahead a brief scan. Tall towers of brown blocks rose out of the beige clouds on wooden stilts, a long, winding track of blue-green laminate tile spiraled and switchbacked and levitated up and up and up, too far for Ding Dong to get a sense of what was up top. “ _That_ might be.”

Chris stepped off the metal starting pad they'd teleported to and started following the blue and white path toward the tower with Ding Dong trailing after. “This is Marble Blast, right? So where's the marble? We gonna get into big zorbo balls like Super Monkey Ball?”

“No spoilers,” Ding Dong mumbled, looking back at his computer screen. “We might end up having to do that later.”

Chris glanced at the laptop with disdain. “M'I gonna have'ta be your seeing-eye dog through all this?”

“If you want. Could be a seeing-eye human instead.”

“Borf?”

 

They meandered down the path a ways, approaching the tower. The tiles started to curve as they passed through the stilts and followed as it twisted upward.

“Seriously, where's the fuckin' marble? There's no fun without the physics.”

“Well we already went through Pikmin without the time limit and Yooka-Laylee without the powerups and collectibles.”

“There were collectibles...” murmured Chris, scratching his hat.

“Were there?” asked Ding Dong, sounding far more interested than he looked. He glanced up in time to avoid walking right off the path and balked at the drop ahead of him, finally folding up the laptop and tucking it under his arm.

“I collected 'em all, though.” Chris laughed half-heartedly. “Had'ta use a pagie to open up the level book, n' then I spent all the quills on snake moves.”

“Snake moves, huh?”

“Well I mean, I learned how ta fuckin'... Uhh...” he gestured vaguely, his hand curled as if around the hilt of his janky sword. Ding Dong watched, smirking.

“Learned how to fuck.”

“From a trouser snake,” replied Chris, putting down his hand as he picked up on the joke. “Yeh-heh.”

 

“Oh wow,” murmured Julian, yawning. “Are all these levels gonna be these nice, sunny places?”

It was a nice place, a grassy meadow surrounded by tall, rocky cliffs- a brightly-graffitied pirate shipwreck sat in the center, with a lovely little stream flowing through. Julian's pikmin stood idly by, clustered in little groups out in the grass, looking intently at the ground. Julian didn't mind them, though, paying more attention to the cool water of the stream.

His break back in the Pikmin level hadn't been very refreshing. He was too hot, it was too dusty, and all his pikmin were just standing around, staring at him. In other words, super awkward. Julian was no stranger to awkward, but with the knowledge that the rest of his team was waiting on him, the eyes of the pik army made him anxious. He'd thrown them all into the portal, both for fear they wouldn't follow him through the level transition _and_ to get them to stop watching. And it mostly worked.

He hoped what was in the shallow channel in front of him was real water. It was clear and it didn't smell like anything, and dipping his hand into it didn't burn, so whatever it was seemed safe enough. Scooping a bit of it out and splashing it through his black, wavy hair, he followed the flow of the water downstream. Gently burbling away from the shipwreck and over a steep embankment down toward a pool, the crystal-clear water hid nothing about the rocky, seaweed-coated bottom of the pond, or about the enormous treasure chest resting down there. Julian glanced down at one of the few pikmin that hadn't been distracted by whatever was on the ground near the entry point.

“Shame you're not one o' the little gill-guys, huh?” he asked with a smile, waving a hand to dismiss its attention before clambering over the embankment and sliding down, landing in the water with a splash.

 


	19. Marbleworks by Discovery Toys

“Chris, wait!” Ding Dong yelped, hanging from the edge of the slowly rising elevator panel.

“What? What's up? Oh.” Chris turned, kneeling to grab Ding Dong by the shirt, helping him up.

“Julian! How's he gonna get through here with all his pikmin?”

“ _Really?_ ” asked Chris, disappointed. Ding Dong didn't seem all that concerned with the precarious heights they were reaching, scrambling to his feet and dusting himself off.

“Half of 'em are gonna fall off the start platform, and with the exit portal all the way at the top...”

“You're just realizing this _now?_ We're like, more than halfway up the tower!”

“The level order wasn't random,” Ding Dong muttered, starting into one of his low-voiced game production tirades. “They gave us Pikmin first for some stupid reason-”

“Well, fuckin'... _Do_ something about it, programmer man! Oh, we're here.”

“Chris, I can't just-” Ding Dong followed Chris off the elevator and froze, looking down at the floating platform they were standing on. “Oh my god. You're right. You're absolutely right.”

“I am?” asked Chris, giving Ding Dong a squint. “About what?”

“They didn't build this place with their bare hands, Chris, this is all holograms and hard light projections! So they had to use a computer program to make it, which means there's a program _in this ship_ that can change the level design!”

“So...?”

“ _So,_ ” said Ding Dong, popping open his borrowed laptop. “I think we just found our fast track.”

  


“This looks like a good stopping point,” murmured Ding Dong, planting himself criss-cross applesauce on the tiles and setting the laptop on his folded legs. “Let's see what we got.”

“ _Lovely place, innit?_ ” asked Chris, putting on a grating English accent. He meant it, though, looking around at the balcony they'd found. Wooden columns and arches held up the ceiling, the gaps between them acting as windows to the purple sky. The calming blue tile of the balcony on which they sat contrasted, but not in a bad way.

Chris gazed out at the sky for a minute, listening to Ding Dong tap on the keys in his search for the level-changey program, but it wasn't long before he started getting antsy. Twiddling his fingers progressed to tapping his foot, and soon enough he was pacing along the edges of the space, trying to find something to occupy his mind. And, as he passed the column of blocks that made up the center support of the tower, he found it.

Squatting down to get a better look, Chris took in the tiny alcove in the wall. The downscaled wooden arch of the doorway only seeming to reach about a meter high, but the hole inside wasn't all that deep. He could see the shape of something within, beyond the reach of the ambient light- there was some kind of rim lighting effect on it, giving the outline a pale glow, but he couldn't make out what it was.

Chris wasn't usually wary, but the dark space beyond the arch reminded him of the alien they were chasing, the hooded cloak and the impenetrable emptiness within. This hidey-hole was too small for it, but still... He reached in to grab the object- and his hand passed right through. The boxy shape turned bright red, illuminating the nook as his hand invaded its geometry- Chris recoiled in shock, it hadn't hurt, but he surprise was bad enough to send him falling on his ass on the tile. “ _FUCK!_ ”

Ding Dong perked up from his computer work, a brow lowered over half-lidded eyes. “What are you doing over there?”

“I was uh,” Chris started, looking back into the again-dimmed hole, not sure how to explain what had just happened. “Tryn'a get a thing, but it wouldn' let me.”

“Wouldn't _let_ you?” asked Ding Dong, curiosity piqued.

“Yah, it turned all red and shit,” Chris laughed. “Scared the piss outta me.”

Ding Dong looked down at the laptop again, punching a few more keys and leaning in toward the screen. “Huh,” he squinted. “It looks like there's something in there, but I don't think it's accessible right now. It's showing up in red here on the screen, too.”

“Maybe it just doesn't like me. You wanna try?”

Ding Dong seemed reluctant to leave the laptop, but he set it down and approached the alcove. “Y'ever gone noodling, Chris?”

“What the hell is that?” Chris asked, chuckling at the ridiculous name.

“It's a redneck fishing thing, you put your hands in the water and- _oh shit!_ ”

Ding Dong had reached into the hole and touched the item- and it promptly exploded into bright red orbs and glittery sparks. Ding Dong jumped backward, crashing into a floating pane of hard light, shattering it into cubes as it broke his fall- the object floating above his lap as he finally came to a landing.

“Ow! Mother _fucker!_ ” Ding Dong grunted, but he recovered quickly enough as he saw the object.

It looked like a bag of those little frosted doughnuts, boxy at the bottom, curled at the top, white with light blue writing on it and a little window revealing the contents.

“Marbles?” Ding Dong asked, incredulously. He touched the levitating bag and it disappeared again, with a far more subtle glitter effect, appearing at his hip next to the other half of the blocky heart container.

“Oh, don't tell me those are the _only_ marbles we're getting in this shithole.”

“Must be another healing item,” Ding Dong sighed. “Coulda done without the glitter bombing, though.”

“Yeah, I'm surprised that didn't blow up the whole tower- we'da had another nine-eleven on our hands.”

“ _Chris._ ”

 


	20. Game Design For Dummies

Julian gasped for air, using the text box that had appeared as if it were a raft. It wasn’t easy to hang on, the big chameleon gun wrapped around his left arm made it tough to grip the slick plastic surface. He skimmed the text as he kicked the box across the surface of the water back to shore.

_The_ _YOOKA-PYOOKA_

“ _Very creative,_ ” panted Julian. He glanced up at the sound of the waterfall- it had increased in volume, and from the looks of things messing with the chest had caused the water level to rise. The edge of the pond was no longer a sheer drop off, and the pikmin he’d left behind was casually toeing the tide.

_This minion capture device doubles as a powerful-…_

The text box broke up on re-entry, fading away as it touched the coast. “Aw.” Julian pulled himself ashore, rolling on to his back to catch his breath. He glanced over at the pale pikmin- it perked up as he laid eyes on it, standing at attention and turning bright red. “Hmm… Minion capture device, huh?” He readied his chameleon arm at the critter and pulled the trigger.

With a _slurp_ , the gun’s ‘mouth’ opened and a tongue shot out, sucking the pikmin into itself. The tips of the chameleon’s crest and tail turned bright red, and Julian grinned.

“Oh, that’s gonna make things _so_ much easier.” He sat up and turned to the rest of the pikmin, spread out into tiny groups across the grass below the ship. Chris and Ding Dong could wait another five minutes. No big deal, right?

 

 

Ding Dong dug into Xertz again. It was hard to get anywhere without watching a video. There were videos for everything, videos for how to make an account, videos for how to make a video, videos for how to _watch_ videos… and of course videos for what he was looking for- how to edit levels.

 

“ **HEY WHAT’S UP MY VAPE WRAITHS IT’S WHISKER KILLER SEVERNTY-NINE AND-”**

“Oh _god_ ,” moaned Ding Dong, muting the vid.

“The fuck was that?” asked Chris, looking over from the floating elevator platform he’d hopped to as he searched around for the way up.

“Nothing, just a… Tutorial?” Ding Dong smiled sheepishly as Chris floated up past the ceiling, out of view, then back down into view with a very disappointed expression. “I gotta learn how to use this alien technology somehow! Gotta use all the resources at my disposal.”

“I’ll fuckin’ uh…” The elevator floated away, then back. “Dispose you. Yeah.” And again. “Bitch.”

Ding Dong rolled his eyes and turned back to the screen, opening a new window to follow the instructions. “What should I do with the level, anyway? How’m I gonna make it easier?”

“I dunno, you could-...” Up. Down. “Make it shorter?” Up. Down. “Flatten it, maybe.”

“But it won’t be fun-”

“It’s already not fun!” Up. Down. “ _There’s_ no fuckin’ marbles _in the..._ ” Uuuup. Dowwwwn. “ _...and the_ physics don’t even _make..._ ” Uuuup… Dowwwwn… “. _..fuck_ ing marble level! Ther _e’s no..._ ”

“Okay, okay, I’ll-”

“Why do you even want _fun_ anyway- ugh!” Chris swung down from the elevator, dangling from the edge to give himself more time to talk as it rose. “Aren’t we here to like, _save the fucking Earth?!_ ”

“ _Fine! Okay!_ The first impression these aliens are gonna have of me as a game developer is gonna be _shit,_ but I’ll do it.”

Chris flopped down on the balcony tile. “Why do you care what they think?”

“I don’t!” Ding Dong frowned down at the screen, tapping along with the tutorial. “I care about video games. And _making_ them.”

“Well _make_ it flat! I wanna get to the end! I wanna find the fuckin’-”

“DONE! I’m _done!_ It’s flat! Okay, Chri-”

One moment, Ding Dong and Chris were sitting on a balcony in the sky, surrounded by clouds and floating platforms. The next, they were on a singular flat plane, its tiled surface stretching out in all directions. “The fuck?” muttered Chris, looking around at the empty space. Ding Dong joined him, glancing across the empty-looking zone.

“The exit should be aroun’ here somewhere. I just flattened the Z-axis so all the X and Y positions are-”

The two of them saw it at the same time- the cloaked figure had been relocated along with them, appearing unsteady on its feet as it came to a stop, the dark void of its hood facing the two. Ding Dong’s eyes widened, his jaw dropped… And the hooded alien bolted.

“Wait!” he called after it, scrambling to his feet, reaching down to grab his laptop as an afterthought. “WAIT!!”

The brown being beat them to the exit, disappearing into thin air over the teleporter pad on the ground.

“Aw, shit,” grumped Chris, stumbling to a stop behind a deflated Ding Dong.

“Whelp,” Ding Dong sighed. “There’s the exit.”

 

 

Julian groaned, taking a seat next to a snake with a big 80s-looking brick phone. There wasn’t anything else cool in the Shipwreck Creek area, just a bunch of money-quills and butterflies. Now Julian was exploring Tribalstack Tropics’ temple towers and exhausting himself in search of cool shit to show Ding Dong and Chris when he eventually caught up to them. The shorts-wearing serpent was giving him the side-eye.

“Alright,” Julian grunted, turning toward it and sharing the shifty expression. “What’s yer offer?”

The snake ‘talked’ to him, garbling in random little vocalizations.

“Oh shit, I forgot about you.”

The text box was way above their heads and Julian couldn’t read it from where he was sitting. The blabbering continued.

“Real intuitive.”

A text box did appear in front of his face- but it only read YES and NO, with green and red buttons.

“Hmm...” Julian glanced back up at the snake. “You sold things, right?”

The NPC didn’t answer, but he felt confident enough in his memory of the original game.

“Y’know what, I got money-feathers,” Julian hummed, reaching up to touch one of the buttons. “ Whatever you’re selling, Yes.”


	21. A Comfortable Burrow

Stepping through the portal, Ding Dong and Chris found themselves in a comfortable burrow with a round window and a green door to the east. Well, more of a cyan door, to be honest. The round window had equally cyan curtains, and a view to a bright pink apocalypse hellscape.

“Are we in Minecraft?” asked Ding Dong, looking around at the sharp edges and ultra-jaggy textures on every object around them. The circular rug they’d entered by looked very carefully woven, cyan and white. A bright magenta-pink fireplace and hearth had what appeared to be a clock and a framed picture of ET from the Atari 2600 game. Maybe. The clock had no hands, and the photo frame was about the dimensions of a cereal box. “This is terrible, what is it even supposed to be?”

Chris wandered over toward the kitchen, popping open a large heavy wooden chest by the door. In the large heavy wooden chest was a length of strong rope and 3 canvas backpacks. “Can we flatten this one, too? This place is garbage. I wanna find the alien!”

“I do, too,” Ding Dong admitted, pulling open the door and looking out at the cyan grass of the sunny well-tended garden to the east.

“Yeah, you looked real down when it ran off. What was that about?”

“Well, it… Chris,” he hesitated, looking up at the noticeboard screwed to the wall above the hearth. “Does that note say ‘Gandalf’?”

“Don’t change the subject!” Chris grinned, wandering into the kitchen. “You were real happy t’see another alien, weren’t you?!”

“That totally says ‘Gandalf’-” Ding Dong continued, taking a closer look. Covering the noticeboard was a group of photographs. Pinned over the photographs was a note. A large piece of notepaper bearing the message, which Ding Dong read aloud: “See you at Rivendell, the matter is urgent. Watch out for the Black Riders. All the best, Gandalf.”

“It’s Laird of the Rangs, Ding Dang!” Chris exclaimed, as if he’d come to the conclusion himself, his arms full of blocky, chunky icons depicting a map, a deer-skin pouch, some pipeweed, an old wooden pipe, a new pipe, a long elaborately carved pipe, and a matchbox, which he promptly dumped onto the matte black wooden floor. The map, the deer-skin pouch, the pipeweed, the old wooden pipe, the new pipe, the long elaborately carved pipe, and the matchbox fell to the matte black wooden floor with a clatter. “Ya gotta flatten it, we’re gonna be stuck here forever cuz the game don’t know the word ‘outside’!”

“Chris, I can’t just make every level ‘flat’, we gotta give it a chance at least!”

“Cheat! Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!”

“Fine! Okay! I’ll just...” Ding Dong opened the laptop and looked at the new room. “Uh oh.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s just _this._ This is _it._ ”

“What d’ya mean, ‘this is it’?”

“It’s just these two rooms- this one room,” he pointed at the map for Chris to look, then gestured up to the round ‘green’ door to the east, “divided in half by that wall.”

“So?” asked Chris, looking over Ding Dong’s shoulder at the monitor. Indeed, there was a tiny box on the screen, highlighted amongst dozens of other boxes and dotted with red and orange circles.

“Go East,” said Ding Dong, and the room changed around them, blocks morphing colors and shaping themselves so the tiny box they were in became a tiny box with green grass and a matte black sky, a magenta path crossing the ground under their feet and stretching up the wall to an image of the comfortable burrow they’d just left behind. They stood in a sunny well-tended garden. “Go West.” Ding Dong and Chris found themselves in a comfortable burrow with a round window and a green door to the east. Well, more of a cyan door, to be honest. The round window had equally cyan curtains, and a view to a bright pink apocalypse hellscape. Ding Dong gave a wry smile, and Chris could see the barely-contained panic in his wide eyes and stiff shoulders. “ _Somebody put a lotta effort inta this one!_ ”

Chris slapped Ding Dong’s shoulder. “Quit freakin’ out, Ding Dong! You’re gettin’ slime on the rug.”

“How are you so _calm_? They’re forcing us to take the long way around!”

“Look, here’s what we do. I’m gonna go out that door and look for how the alien did it, and you stay in here and find us a way out through your game-makey buildy-doo. Two heads with one stone!”

“Chris.”

“...Two birds with one head. Wait, shit.”

“Chris...”

“Too stoned-”

“Chris,” stated Ding Dong, the lilt in his voice betraying his smile. “Go on, get.”

Chris smiled back, gave a heroic-looking hair flip (despite his beanie) and Go’d East.

 

“Alright,” sighed Ding Dong, sitting down on the floor again to look over the laptop. “Back to business.”

“Ding Dong.”

“Nyello?” asked Ding Dong, casually looking up from the computer toward the kitchen before realizing he was supposed to be alone. He shot to his feet, his laptop clattering to the floor. Out of the kitchen cupboard climbed the hooded alien from before, its long brown cloak supported by thin pale legs that extended down out of the small wooden doors to the kitchen countertop.

Its voice was nasal and sharply accented, but didn’t seem to contain any malice. “Your name is Ding Dong?”

“Ye-ah?” Ding Dong replied, his voice cracking.

“As good as it is to see a fellow Chicagoian, this is- _The_ worst place you could possibly be.”

 


	22. Deadly Text Adventure

Ding Dong was stunned. The first alien they meet and it’s one of his kind, from his home planet? What were the odds? Unfortunately it didn’t seem to be as happy to see him as he was to see it.

“Wh- Where else would I be?! The let’s players destroyed Chicago, I’ve spent the last two years studying their ways, learning game design-”

“So you and I are the same, then.” It spoke again, in that matter-of-fact tone. “You seek vengeance.”

Ding Dong paused. First and foremost they’d come here for their own survival. For some reason Chris had started getting it into his head that they could save Earth, but Ding Dong had no delusions about their chances of staving off the coming destruction. Back when he’d first pupated he wanted nothing more than to fight back against the force that had destroyed his home, but then… “I… I used to, I don’t really know anymore. But- how did you survive Chicago? Are there any others?”

“Answers will come in time, Ding Dong. You and I have much to talk about, but your pink-skinned friend is right. If you keep playing these levels as they were built for you, you will die.”

 

In his half of the room on the other side of the door, Chris hammered away at the room’s controls, yammering random directions until something interesting appeared, or backtracking when things looked dangerous. “East. East. South. East. Shit, west. South. North! _North!_ ”

Soon enough, Chris found himself on the sandy beach of a wide silver lake in a shallow green valley. The lake was oval, its long axis aligned southwest-northeast, and it looked very pleasant. Tired of wandering around, Chris wondered if the lake was something he could interact with.

“Fuckin, uh. S-swim.” The room began to change- “Gah-fuck!” Suddenly Chris was neck-deep in what felt like foam cubes, and struggling to keep his head above the surface!

 

“Goddamn it, I figured as much,” griped Ding Dong, looking down at his computer. “Can you get us out of here? Vouch for us? Maybe the other Let’s Players could-”

“I do not even know how to get out of this one,” admitted the hooded alien. “I witnessed your team’s arrival and followed you into the tutorial. The first ten levels are on a track- they cannot be interfered with by normal means. Spectator mode only. No entry, no exit.”

“They really want us to just, die in here? That can’t be very fun to watch.”

 

Chris held his breath and sank a moment, but the all-encompassing royal blue was crushing the air out of his lungs, and he had to make his way back up again. The longer Chris struggled, the weaker he felt. Maybe he really did have some kind of stamina bar, already his legs felt like jelly and his arms weren’t far behind. Out of the water rose the watery tart’s head.

 

“You cannot escape the track, but you can change the contents-” The other being’s hood tilted as Ding Dong frowned, his nublets drooping. “I’ve seen you do it.”

“But this room is totally different from the last one! Everything’s hidden in the walls! How’m I supposed to-?”

“I have no answers. Really. All I ever played was Moinecreft. I never messed with the level editor.”

“Minecraft..?” muttered Ding Dong, looking down at all the boxes on the laptop’s screen.

 

“GET OUT OF MY BOUDOIR, YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE HOBBIT!” The shriek pierced Chris’s hearing, causing him to reach up and cover his ears, dunking him below the surface yet again. He drug himself back up to the surface for another breath- and was clonked square in the face by something, sending him back down in shock.

A cyan glint cut through the royal blue water and Chris grabbed for it, using it as support to push himself up to the surface- bellowing the first direction that came to mind as his face hit air. “ _NORRRTH_ _!!_ ”

 

“Maybe I can brute force it,” Ding Dong hummed, opening up the level editor and looking at the two halves of the room. “Maybe I can put the right sequence of directions in and make the final room appear.”

“What about the brown one?”

“The brown what?” asked Ding Dong, raising an eyebrow to show he was listening.

“The one you came in with, the brown one. As opposed to the pink one that just left.”

“You mean Julian?” Ding Dong gasped, slapping a hand to his forehead. “Oh shit, if the first room is gone, then so’s the entry teleporter?”

The cloaked entity shrugged. “You almost crushed me to death in that kitchen cupboard when you went outside. It doesn’t cease to be, but I doubt its accessibility.”

“Fuck, so that’s out of the question.”

 

It didn’t work. Yelling ‘north’ didn’t work. “S- SOUTH!” shouted Chris, his legs starting to go numb, the something he’d grabbed only doing so much to keep him afloat. “EAST??”

 

“Can I do it on only one side of the room?” Ding Dong asked, rhetorically. “That must be what Chris is doing, right?”

“It looks as though he is drowning, actually,” spoke the hooded figure, nodding toward the round window behind Ding Dong’s head.

Ding Dong’s nublets perked up, and his head whirled, following the other alien’s gaze. He jumped up toward the window and looked out- sure enough the round window acted as a ship’s porthole, showing an open lake of royal blue water, and in the center of it, “CHRIS!!”

“Perhaps your computer can do something?” suggested the other alien, a lot more calmly than Ding Dong liked.

“ _Perhaps YOU could do something?!_ ”

“I have no arms.”

 

“WEST!” Nothing. “STOP SWIMMING!” Nothing. “ _GO OUUUUT!!_ ” No response. Great.

Chris’s vision was full of blue, his limbs were tired and sore, his throat was raw, he felt weary and stretched, and he was starting to think that this might be it.

Suddenly the water was gone, and he was on a stone bridge with many arches over a wide river. 3 black riders entered. Chris, lying facedown on the stone bridge, looked up at the thick black pixellated hooves in front of his face and realized that this was totally it.

 

“SHIT!” cried Ding Dong, glancing out the window before hunching over the laptop and abusing the keys with another sequence of letters and numbers.

 

Chris blinked, and the world around him morphed into a long, gloomy cutting with sides too steep and treacherous to climb. The forest above him was dark and thick with undergrowth. He couldn’t move. Trying to swim in that mess had totally exhausted him. He just laid there, face in the neon dirt and loosely grasping the ‘something’ that the watery tart had beaned him with. Maybe he was dead already. Maybe this was what death was like. Fuckin’ sucked.

 

“ _Oh, thank God,_ ” Ding Dong sighed, looking out the window to see Chris, still breathing. He slid down the wall, sitting down on the matte black floor. The hooded Chicagoian stood by, watching.

“You three might just make it.”


	23. Navel Gazing

Julian looked over his shoulder in horror. He could feel them. He could _feel_ them- he reached back to confirm, running his hand along the thumb and first phalange and shivering at the tactile feedback. “Okay, that’s freaky.”

The pants-wearing snake trader had equipped him with weird, gross, little purple bat wings that extended from his shirt, blending with it as he pulled them inward. It felt like… Well, it felt exactly like how he would have expected having new limbs to feel, if Julian was honest. Nestled against his back, the wrists and thumbs tucked up against his shoulder blades like nervous animals seeking warmth. While it wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable, it was a strange enough sensation to make Julian extend them again, to keep them as far away from himself as possible.

He gave them a test flap, catching air in the fleshy webbing. Alright, so they were, indeed, meant for flying, but Julian sincerely doubted how effective they were going to be. He’d be the first to admit to having a less-than-aerodynamic physique; proving it as he struggled to stand, pushing himself back to his feet with a grunt and a groan. So he was fat. He was fine with it, it was just a fact of life- as were the laws of physics that prevented most people from flying. Even if he were thin, human bones were heavy, unlike bird bones. Or bat bones, in this case.

But what if the wings could compensate for that? The aliens wouldn’t give him something that outright _didn’t work_ , would they? So far it didn’t seem like they were the griefing kind, with acceptable adaptations of Pikmin and Yooka-Laylee thus far. And the Yooka Pyooka worked perfectly well, too, in spite of the obvious lack of a visible pikmin containment space. Horrible, mass-murdering space nazis they may be, but they certainly seemed to care about faithfulness to the original game.

He gazed across at the opposing temple, where the steps were bisected with an enormous crack that split off at the top, overall giving the impression of an arrow pointing to the door at the peak of the pyramid. Surely that was the exit, and if he trusted that, then why didn’t he trust this? He certainly needed to catch up to Ding Dong and Chris, and it would be a lot faster to glide right over there than it would be to climb all the way down these steps, and all the way up the crumbling, shitty steps of the other pyramid…

Julian walked back to the center of the floor where the snake waited and took a deep breath, turning on his heel and making a dash for the entrance, spreading his newfound wings and praying to whatever god was up there that they worked as intended.

 

“Chris? You okay, Chris?” asked Ding Dong, opening the green door and stepping out into the long, gloomy cutting with sides too steep and treacherous to climb. Chris lay in the middle of the path, unmoving, aside from his back rising and falling with his breath. Ding Dong knelt beside him, resting a hand on his face, leaning over to make eye contact. “Chris?”

Chris’s throat rattled as he slowly blinked up at Ding Dong. He was too exhausted for anything else, that bullshit inescapable pond having sapped everything he had. Ding Dong was talking, but Chris wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying. He had tunnel vision like crazy- all he could see were Ding Dong’s tired, fearful eyes, all he could hear was the muffled buzz of his voice.

Ding Dong was starting to panic. Chris wasn’t answering any of his concussion-test questions, not even making a funny about the current president. Their new alien friend was standing uselessly in the door (which, on this side, seemed as though it was coming right out of the wall of the ravine), and who knew where or how Julian was doing, if he was still alive or had discovered some new way to die that Ding Dong hadn’t foreseen… He sat up and shook his head, trying to relax, tugging the pixellated potion bottle from his hip. “Okay, let’s see if we can get it to work this time.” Standing up from the ground, Ding Dong gave the bottle an underhand toss and watched it take a slow arc through the air and landing square on Chris’s back, where it shattered to pieces- releasing an enormous red cloud of mist.

Chris coughed, breathing in the mist and pushing himself up on his arm. “What the fuh, Deng Don’?” he whined, shaking the fading bits of digital glass off his shoulders. Though, the longer he sat there the better he felt, the strain fading from his arms and legs. Soon he felt well enough to sit up, and as the mist began to fade he felt almost as if he’d woken from a long nap. “The hell was that?”

“The other half of the paopu fruit,” goofed Ding Dong, nonchalance masking his relief. “Now you and Julian’s destinies are intertwined.”

“Aw no, but ‘m straight.” Chris smiled, sharing the moment. Then- “Wait, is that a fuckin’ alien?”

“Uhh,” Ding Dong glanced at the hooded being still standing in the doorway. “Yes?”

“That’s it- that’s the fuckin’ thing I was chasing!” Chris jumped to his feet, addressing the alien. “Why’d you run from us?”

“To be fair, I _thought_ I would be the one following _you_.”

“What, ‘cuz we’re so epic?” asked Chris, grinning. “Cuz we’re winning the game?”

“No… In fact, Team OneyPlays is in dead last.”


	24. The Space Between

_Incoming call from Suzy Berhow_

“Danny? Arin won’t call me back. Did he turn his phone off? Are you there?”

“Suzy? _Aw fuck._ This is… Not a great time, Suzy! I’m- gh- _We’re_ on level ten-”

“So am I! I just. I wanted Arin to know-”

“ _suzyarinsdead_ ”

“What was that?”

“Arin, he...”

_BANG! BANG BANG!_

“Fuck! I’ll call you back, okay, Danny?”

“Suzy! Arin’s _dead,_ he-”

…

“Oh god.”

_Matt Watson_

_hey Dan are you guys okay?  
_ _Arin hasn’t read my texts  
_ _Ryan’s gone_

 _Arin’s gone, too.  
_ _I’m so sorry._

 _Nah dude its  
_ _This place is fucked danny  
_ _I wanna go home_

 _No arguments here!  
_ _100% for that idea!_

 _What are we gonna do?  
_ _How do we get outta here?_

_I don’t know. I don’t know._

 

 _@Markiplier:  
_ _RT @CrankGameplays:  
_ _Hey, @markiplier @jack_septic_eye you guys neglECTED TO MENTION THE TJOC:R LEVEL!  
_ _THAANK YOU!_

 

_@commanderholly posted a video._

“Danny, it’s Holly-”  
“And Ross.”  
“I know this looks bad-”  
“Real fuckin’ bad-”  
“But you can do this! Whatever comes next, we’re with you, okay?”  
“Yeah man, in spirit.”  
“Ross!!”  
“What? I can’t wish a guy luck?”

 

_Incoming call from Ninja Brian_

“Danny.”

“Brian?”

“Don’t die.”

“Brian-”

“Crying is acceptable.”

“ _Brian..._ ”

“We’re trusting you to come home safe, Dan. We believe in you.”

“ _Fuck, Brian, don’t say that._ ”

“Can I say that you’re about to win?”

“ _Hah, if you’re telling the truth, go right ahead._ ”

“Dan. You’re about to win.”

* * *

 “What do you _mean_ we’re dead last?” Chris demanded, hands on his hips, barely managing not to stab himself with the cyan-glimmering dagger he’d acquired somewhere he couldn’t recall.

The brown alien’s cloak billowed as if it had breathed a deep, exaggerated sigh. “I have never seen a team take so long to finish a single level. You even left each other behind. No doubt the other teams and solo players have already reached the Boss, and the break room beyond.”

“There’s a _Boss level?_ ” Ding Dong moaned, puttering past the other alien into the comfortable burrow.

“Several.”

“Great,” replied Chris, as the three of them regrouped in the hobbit hole and sat down over Ding Dong’s laptop, watching as the game maker began tip-tapping out new room combinations and watching the results through the door. It was quiet, and Ding Dong began to ooze again, glancing up at the door and watching the scene beyond change from a long gloomy cutting to an oval lake, to a broad paved highway, to a large hall (around the walls were rows of glass cases containing ancient artifacts), to a path along the bank of the river Withywindle overhung with willows. “This is boring. Where the hell is Julian?”

“Don’t rush him, he’ll get here.”

“Oh Jesus, what if he had to go to the bathroom or somethin’? I’ll bet that’s what’s taking him!”

“There… Aren’t any secret bathrooms hidden around here, are there.” It was less a question and more a resigned statement.

“No. Exits.” insisted the hooded alien.

“Oh shit- I think that’s the exit!” Ding Dong exclaimed, pointing out the door.

If it wasn’t the exit, Chris had no idea what else it could be. The room beyond was pure cyan, with black words reading ‘ **CONGRATULATIONS! Your courage and ingenuity have brought you to the end of part 1, but far worse lies ahead on your quest** ’ and a magenta circle on the floor- the exit portal. “Nice!” he cheered, hopping up from his place on the floor and jogging towards the open door, dagger-holding arm outstretched.

“Wait- what about Julian?” Ding Dong asked, looking down at the entry portal rug on the floor of their current room. “Should we wait for-?”

“He’ll catch up when he catches up!” Chris grouched, pulling Ding Dong up off the floor. “We keep making the levels this easy he’ll show up in no time, come on!”

Ding Dong fumbled with the laptop and skittered out the door behind Chris, followed shortly by the cloaked alien, which seemed to glide with them out the door and into the magenta portal.

 

“Oh fuck, oh Jesus, _OH FUCK-!!_ ”

Julian’s wings had a mind of their own. It was still part of his mind, he could still take direct control of them, but a lot of the movement seemed to be involuntary, thoughtless, like reaching to pick something up without looking at it. His attempt at gliding had turned into alternating high-velocity freefall and panicked flapping as he learned a whole new way of thinking in order to keep from hitting the ground. He raised his hands in front of his face to avoid impact with the top of the doorframe of the opposite temple, which he’d approached at high speed, but as he slowly, cautiously peeked between the fingers of his un-gunned hand, his wings had taken to a rapid pattering pace, allowing him to hover, his face sitting inches from the bricks making up the doorway just before him.

With a sigh of both relief and exasperation, Julian and his wings lowered himself to the entryway, needing an extra moment to remember how to walk once his feet reached stone. He stumbled into the exit portal, leaving Tribalstack Tropics behind and finding himself… In the middle of nowhere?

“Chris?” his voice echoed across the flat, empty plane of blue-green tile, “Ding Dong?” reverberating off the ground and disappearing into the purple sky, full of spinning rings far, far above him. And there, just a short ways in front of him, was the exit portal.

Julian’s stomach dropped. This was the whole thing? This couldn’t be it, and if it was, had something gone wrong? Something had to have gone wrong, this was… This was meant to be Marble Blast, wasn’t it? He stepped off the entry platform, slowly padding his way down toward the exit, his eyes darting back and forth across the void. Every step brought a new fear to his mind, a new possibility as to what could have happened, and a cautious tiptoe turned into a well-paced jog, which turned into a nervous fumbling gait, which turned into a frenzied sprint to the teleporter.

“ _I’M COMING, GUYS!! AAAAAAAAA!!!_ ”


	25. The First of Many

“ **Hey there, SQIJ-lings!** My name’s Zexpectrika and we’re streaming a live reaction to Earth Team Three, **Team OneyPlays!** They had a strong start; being the only three-man team, _they immediately split up and **got hella lost.**_ ”

“But now they’re back and better than ever, upgrading from a casual wandering about to a Tool-Assisted Speedrun- that’s right, everybody, a **_Tool-Assisted Speedrun!_ ** Never, in the entire _history_ of the **Let’s Player Trials,** have we had a team attempt such a thing! Most **everybody else plays as-is** , _which is marvelous in itself, everybody has their own playstyle,_ but there’s something to be said for **their outside-the-box thinking**. Speaking of, it seems as though **Team Oneyplays** player three, **Julian** , has finally got it in his head to catch up to his fellow teammates!”

“The only one of his team to **complete a loadout** by finding **_both_ a themed weapon and powerup** , Julian seems the type to poke about for secrets more than take action. Even so, it’s far too soon to make a judgment call- seeing as **the fleshy, bipedal cutie** is simply _booking it_ to the next level. **Let’s tune in!** ”

* * *

 

Julian stumbled over the janky edge of the carpet entry portal and fell into a tactical crouch, aiming his gun-equipped arm around the room in case of danger- but his fears seemed to be unfounded as nothing at all attacked him.

Nothing looked to be moving, in fact, a cursory scan of the space revealed him to be in a comfortable burrow with with a round window and a green door to the east. Well, more of a blue door, to be honest, which was wide open, revealing a blue room beyond with the word **CONGRATULATIONS** printed on the far wall. There was a noticeboard screwed to the wall above the crackling pink fireplace. There was a large heavy wooden chest by the door to the kitchen, where a jumbled handful of icons rested on the kitchen floor including a map, a deer-skin pouch, some pipeweed, an old wooden pipe, a new pipe, a long elaborately carved pipe, and a matchbox.

The mess on the kitchen floor was concerning, but the congratulatory message right outside the door was concerning in a different way. There had been another kind of struggle here, if any, and Julian was surprised that Ding Dong and Chris, if they’d come through here at all, had left so many supplies behind, icon-form or otherwise. ,Remembering the urgency of the situation, Julian took a brief inventory of the room and tried to decide what would be most relevant to bring. The orange ring floating in the hearth behind the crackling pink and black pixels of the fire was a must-have, that much was clear…

* * *

 

“ _Jesus Christ!!_ ”

“No! Bad Monkey!” Chris swiped at the dark blue creature with his dagger as it leaped at Ding Dong, its claws slashing furiously through the air. With a slash to the arm, it got the hint and turned its attack on Chris instead- earning itself an immediate knife to the chest and a dissolution into purple and black mist. Before Chris could celebrate, two new monkeys appeared from behind a canvas-covered collection of crates, joining the crew that had begun to accumulate on the clear-cut jungle floor.

“Where are they all coming from??” Ding Dong cried, seeking shelter under the flap of one of the tents, coiling around the laptop in an effort to protect it from the onslaught. One of the monkeys drew near and he winced in disgust, kicking lamely at it. “Fuck off! Fuck _off!!_ ”

The cloaked alien silently swooped up to the top of a pile of junk, its hood flicking side to side as it watched the incoming creatures. “There’s a spawner here!” it announced, though it wasn’t really able to point out where it meant.

“CHRIS!” screeched Ding Dong, “I don’t have any weapons- FUCKING COVER ME!”

“Fucking Christ!” Chris roared, shoving past the mobs toward the tent and getting his hands scratched up as he used them a lot more than he used the shining dagger he was now equipped with. “I want my shitty sword back! This shiv is _fucking useless!_ ”

The hooded alien made it down first, defending Ding Dong bodily, its thick cloak protecting against the enemies’ claws. It gave Chris the opening he needed, each distraction letting him kill the newest vaguely-monkey-shaped blue beast. “Where _is_ your sword?” it asked, hood tilted in question.

“Argh! I dropped it in the _fucking_ lake, okay?!”

“...You remind me of myself.”

“Delete spawner! DELETE SPAWNER!” Ding Dong announced, as he hammered the keys of the laptop. It wouldn’t do him much good to yell, he knew that, but at least Chris wouldn’t be yelling at him to-

“ _HURRY UP!!_ ”

Nevermind. Ding Dong didn’t have time to give Chris a disparaging look, as another monkey landed by his feet- and was quickly set upon by two red pikmin. “Julian!”

Julian had indeed arrived, spitting pikmin from the lizard on his arm, dodging flailing monkeys by jumping out of the way, assisted by the purple wings on his back. With renewed fervor, Ding Dong dove back into the level editor, finally managing to destroy the source of the enemies.

“I got it!” he called, snapping the laptop shut and hopping out from under the tent’s cover toward the fray. Between Chris, Julian’s pikmin, and the cloaked alien, the enemy forces began to wane.

“Ding Dong!” Julian dropped out of the air and pulled Ding Dong into his arms, dragging Chris by the shirt into a Team Oney group hug. “I was so worried about you guys! ...Who the hell is that?”

 


	26. The Questionable Samaritan

“Oh man, that’s right-” Chris started, pulling away from Julian’s grip. “We never got your name!”

The brown-cloaked alien seemed to hesitate, the impenetrable darkness of its hood seeming to look upon each of them in turn, before finally addressing Chris with its nasally whine. “Whatever name I had before, I no longer deserve. The things I’ve done here in pursuit of content… The things I’ve allowed to happen… Unspeakable. Unforgivable.”

Julian glanced at Ding Dong, who shrugged, still tucked comfortably under his lizard-toting arm.

“If you must call me something, let it be an insult.” It grew more enthusiastic, approaching Chris with something resembling a bounce in its step. “Let it be the most horrible insult your people have devised.”

A pane of holographic light appeared between the two of them, a text box with ten empty spaces and a little keypad printed below. Chris squinted, looking to his co-hosts. Julian seemed shocked that Chris was looking his way at all, and Ding Dong glared back. “Chris,” he warned, though he wasn’t about to move from Julian’s side to really reprimand him.

“Uh, yyyour name is…” Chris typed a ‘B’ and looked back again. Ding Dong slapped a hand to his forehead in exasperation while Julian shrugged.

“Get on with it!” shouted Ding Dong, and Chris tapped in the rest, the text box blinking away under his fingertips.

“Your name is now ‘BrownBrick’,” he announced, standing proudly, hands on his hips.

“Ah yes, suitably despicable,” the newly-dubbed Brown Brick nodded. “I knew there was something special about you.”

“ _No, but seriously, where did he come from?_ ” asked Julian, and Ding Dong shrugged.

“ _They broke into our game back at the player select screen,_ ” he mumbled playfully into Julian’s ear. “ _I think they’re hot for Chris._ ”

“But we haven’t any time for this!” Brown Brick insisted. “You three know what the Let’s Players’ intentions are- we must hurry if we’re going to stop them.”

“ _Do_ we?” Julian squeaked. “Know what they are? Do _you_ know we know-?”

“I’m sorry if this is a shock to you, but they plan to destroy your home planet, the Earth.”

“Ohh, yeah, yep.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“We knew that, yeah.”

“So… You don’t _mind?_ ” Brown Brick’s hood tilted in confusion. “Do you _want_ your planet destroyed?”

“No, of course not!”

“It just doesn’t feel like…”

“Even now they prepare! These trial games are merely a distraction!”

“I mean...”

“Do you need _a reminder?_ I will give you a reminder!”

With an invisible force, Julian and Ding Dong were pried apart, and the laptop in the crook of Ding Dong’s arm was wrenched from his grip, swinging itself open in midair. A browser window opened to the social site, Xertz, with a panel therein streaming a video that the boys couldn’t immediately identify the contents of.

“The hell is that?”

“This is what the other Earth players are facing _right now._ ”

 

_Clunk-whump-clank_

_Clunk-whump-clank_

“ _I hate this,_ ” Ethan whimpered, his voice barely being picked up as he wandered down the hallway, blue flashlight in hand. “I hate _being chased,_ I hate _Freddy,_ I hate _hearing him-_ …”

_Clunk. CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK “NO NO FREDDY **FUCK-!!** ”_

_Clunk-whump-clank_

_Clunk-whump-clank_

 

Dan lay on overgrown, red, diamond-plated steel, catching his breath after the long climb up the Sky Garden Tower. In a ring of flowers just ahead lay the teleporter, the end of level ten. Physically and emotionally exhausted, he pulled himself in.

 

Suzy floated neck-deep in cold cavern water, covering her ears against the all-encompassing hum collected within the stone walls. Her makeup smeared and dripping, her yellow GA-KO camouflage barely insulating her shivering form. A new camera angle revealed bees. Hundreds of bees.

 

Matt cut a thin silhouette above the ocean of flame, gripping a molotov and staring down at the smoldering remains of Boss Cass and his ruined giant football-player robot. With an empty-eyed gaze, he ignored the exit portal swirling just behind him.

 

“Where’s Ryan…?” Ding Dong mumbled, unable to air what the blue skull icon in the corner of the stream told him.

“Where’s _Arin?_ ” demanded Chris, but he yelped as the laptop dropped to the dusty campground floor.

Brown Brick seemed to fix them with a glare, hunched posture belying any previous friendliness. “If you continue. Down this path. Your Earth is doomed. You will die. Or you will reach the end. Far too _weak_. And far too _late._ To save it. _Don’t make me. Use my power. Again._ ”

“…Or what?” asked Chris, perturbed but genuinely curious.

“ _Chris!_ ”scolded Ding Dong.

“Yeah, _or what?_ ” sassed Julian, in a challenging tone.

“ _Julian!”_ Ding Dong cried in disbelief.

Brown Brick slowly straightened in posture, head rising in an unnaturally smooth motion, then nodding at Ding Dong. “ _He_ can tell you. After the trials.” And with that, the alien slunk off toward the bamboo-patterned wall of the level, and sat.

 

“What did ‘e mean by that, Ding Dong?” asked Chris, pacing, watching Brown Brick from the corner of his eye. “What powers does ‘e even _have_?”

Ding Dong didn’t answer, focusing instead on the laptop in front of him. It had been a hot minute, and between the footage they’d been shown and the attitude of their impromptu guide the boys were sufficiently intimidated. Chris was on edge, twitchy, distrustful, and the lack of response made him feel even jumpier.

Julian’s adrenaline rush had worn off and he sat back-to-back with Ding Dong, newly-acquired wings hanging loosely to his sides, his collection of pikmin standing around, aimless without any new enemies to fight.

Ding Dong poked through every tool in the level editor. How fast was fast enough? Could they really take on the Let’s Players like this? Ding Dong realized just what kind of heat the enemy could be packing. Even with Julian’s new gun and wings, the three of them seemed woefully under-equipped in comparison.

“Oh, hey, Chris!” called Julian, leaning to the side to pull something out of his pocket- a deer-skin pouch, which he popped open. “I found this thing in the last level. It wouldn’t let me use it, but…”


	27. Level Crush

Chris turned, and leaned in to look- and Ding Dong glanced over his shoulder, doing a double-take at the bag’s contents.

“Uh, Juulian,” Chris scoffed, feigning posh offense. “I’m a _straight?_ ”

“Is that a ring? Is that _The Ring??_ ” Ding Dong screeched, practically clambering over Julian’s shoulder for a better look at the bag. “Chris! You _have_ to take it- it’s orange!”

“I mean, I’ll take it, but why orange?” he asked, frowning.“Because of my _shirt?_ ”

“How did you get that?”

“ _Oh! My god-_ ” yelped Julian, practically cracking his neck to look at Brown Brick, who had returned from temper tantrum corner, getting way too close to the trio. “Don’t _do_ that!”

“Hey, don’t scare Julian!” Chris scolded, “he has a weak heart!”

“I’ve got a poor ponstit- constitu-”

“Yeah, he’s got a poor prostitution.”

“ _A poor constitution!_ ”

“You three have… Very short attention spans,” Brown Brick muttered, hood tilting to each of them. “But I do apologize. I was just curious as to how you collected that powerup.”

“Well it wouldn’t let me actually grab it, so I put it in the bag?” Julian asked, holding up the deerskin pouch for Brown Brick to see- and Chris reached in and grabbed the ring.

 

LOADOUT COMPLETE  
THE ONEY RING

 

“Okay, what does that mean?” asked Chris, looking at the ring on his finger. “Wait, am I invisible?”

“No,” hummed Ding Dong, leaning over Julian’s head to tug on Chris’s hand. “Is it broken?”

“Wait, lemme-” Chris grunted, tugging his hand back- and glimmering bright orange along the edges of his clothes and hair, the core of his form turning transparent and watery. “Did it work?”

“Oh my god,” Ding Dong giggled in shock. “You’re even _more visible_ than you were before!”

“So much for being a straight,” Julian quipped, grinning in spite of Ding Dong’s weight on his face. “You’re _literally flaming_.”

“Well, how about shut up?!”

“ _Very_ short attention spans. Ding Dong, have you made any progress?”

“Oh, uh,” stuttered Ding Dong, fumbling over himself and Julian to return to his laptop. “I think so, yeah. I figured out the tools n’ reduced the next two levels down already, but it won’t let me go any farther than that.”

“One of the few anti-griefing measures they have here. You should be able to edit them as we get closer.”

“Speaking of editing,” Julian mused, “where’s the exit?”

“The next room over- I only got rid of the one mob spawner, there are other rooms in this level we’re s’posed to explore, but I’ll uh-”

“Squish ‘em!” demanded Chris, grinning.

“That.” Ding Dong replied, tapping a few commands into the console. “Alright, no more spawners, but that might not account for anything that’s uh, already hanging around...”

“We’ll be ready,” Julian insisted, giving a long, high-pitched whistle. His collection of pikmin hopped to attention and swarmed, collecting around Chris as if he were neck-deep in a sea of leaves.

“Alright,” droned Ding Dong. “You guys hold ‘em off until we can all get into the portal, okay?”

He looked between the two humans, who readied their weapons in a manner perhaps more serious than their surroundings allowed. Between Julian’s pikmin, arm lizard, and purple wings, Chris’s unintentional LOTR LARP accessories, and the pair’s set jaws and determined gazes, Ding Dong didn’t know whether to laugh or nod in stolid agreement. He leaned toward the latter.

“Level squishing in three… Two… One…”

 

With a snarl, a bright yellow leopard sprung from the surrounding bamboo- pouncing right on top of Chris, the two of them disappearing under the cover of pikmin leaves.

“CHRIS!” Ding Dong shrieked, shuffling backwards in his effort to stand, stumbling into Brown Brick and causing the two of them to fall into a very polygonal teleporter pad and disappear with a flash.

“Ohhh boy,” mumbled Julian, craning his neck to look up at the swirling liquify effect mildly obfuscating the form of the ten-foot-tall chameleon that towered above him.

 

“Oh no, _oh fuck,_ ” whimpered Ding Dong, hammering at the laptop keyboard. “There’s gotta be some way to despawn the enemies! We can’t fight them like this! Throwing fucking minibosses at us and shit, that’s not fair?”

“What is wrong?” asked Brown Brick, hesitating.

“WHAT’S _WRONG??_ ” wailed Ding Dong, a horrified and incredulous expression pulling his face in several directions. “ _We left them behind!!_ ”

“…Is that not something you would normally do? You did split up not long ago.”

“ _THIS IS DIFFERENT._ ”

 

Julian took to the air, the pikmin at his command moving as one, clambering up the not-quite-invisible limbs of the chameleon and ploonking out a din of arrythmic headbutts. As they cleared the area in pursuit of the lumbering lizard, Chris shoved off the blinking pelt of the deceased virtual cat and shoved himself to his feet. He didn’t have long to recover from the beast’s sudden suicidal self-impalement on his tiny dagger-sword before he was set upon by a scampering crew of golden-eyed monkey mobs. In his hand, a tiny chain with a crown-shaped charm.


	28. Abrupt Attitude Adjustment

“To be fair, I do find it extremely strange that you have bonded this deeply with two aliens.”

“They’re not aliens-” Ding Dong was about to comment, but he caught himself. “Oh shit, you’re right. Out here, I guess…”

According to the map and the many livestreams on Xertz, Ding Dong’s human friends were holding their own quite well. He’d taken a few deep breaths to calm himself down, and Brown Brick had watched him intently the whole time. “They seem fine. We ought to keep moving.”

“I need to make sure.”

“You worry.” Not an opinion so much as an observation.

“I’m a support class, it’s my job to worry.” There was a weight to his words.

“What were you,” asked Brown Brick, “back on Chicago?”

“I don’t remember.” Ding Dong replied, simple, firm.

“I see. So you’re out of time, too.”

Ding Dong gave a measured, frustrated sigh. “How are _you_ even alive? I thought Brownhood--”

 

Chris stumbled through the teleporter, dropping his dagger to the grassy-textured ground, glittering light fading away around his other hand. He dropped out of ‘invisibility’, the firey aura fizzling off his shoulders. He looked tired- though, to Ding Dong’s relief, not as exhausted as he’d been after that pond incident. “Chris!”

“Hey,” he grunted, curtly scooping his cyan-gleaming blade back up and smacking it to his hip, where it stayed. “Let’s go.”

“What about Julian?”

“He’s collecting all his pikmin again, said we could leave without ‘im if we-”

“Hey, guys!” It was Julian, who had just swooped out of the teleporter to flap behind Chris. “I figured out how to use my tongue- I mean the gun’s tongue-”

“ _Okay, Julian’s here, let’s go!_ ”

 

And with little fuss, they were off. Out of the wide-open grassy plane of the island in the sky and into a cramped train car, the rumble of the tracks offset by the increasingly loud thudding of the crates and luggage against either wall of the dim space as they clipped into each other. Ding Dong paid it no mind, eyes on his laptop as he collapsed the next two levels ahead, trying to keep up with Chris’s brisk pace. Brown Brick and Julian brought up the rear, jogging down the narrow passage to the teleporter and hoping none of the surrounding cargo would act on the threatening sound it produced.

 

They entered into the next level, which almost halted Chris’s progress- another narrow aisle, a long floor of wooden planks, a cavern ceiling with sharp, dangling stalactites, suspended by Grecian marble columns, separating the players from the open sky beyond the hall. “Where the F* _tmp_ * is this supposed to be?”

Ding Dong’s laptop had made a sound, and the pale alien frowned at it in concern.

“S’all squished together, I think,” Julian suggested, eyeline trailing from the strange ceiling to the computer over Ding Dong’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Let’s keep going.”

 

The next world was rocky, but vibrantly purple. Arches full of sponge-like holes dotted the distant landscape projected upon the illusory walls. The flattened ground around them was cratered and uneven. Ding Dong began to sweat, glancing between the laptop and Chris, as the beanie-wearing gamer approached the next teleporter.

“WAIT!” he finally cried, grabbing the back of Chris’s shirt and tugging him away from the ratty, wooden platform. “We can’t go yet!”

“Why not?” asked Chris, looking over at Ding Dong, and then at Julian, (who, at the first sign of dissension in the ranks, had broken formation and started investigating the surrounding craters, Brown Brick joining in watching him go,) and then back at Ding Dong, who was freaking out.

“It won’t let me edit level ten! I’ve done everything I can think of-”

“ _What?_ Let me see,” demanded Chris, pulling Ding Dong’s arm until he could see the laptop screen. Level Ten, just ahead of them, looked from the stylized map to be an enormous room- but all the tools on Ding Dong’s editor screen were greyed out, and a big popup was hovering in the middle of the map panel, reading some warning in a language unknown to humanity. “What does that mean!? _Fucking alien garbage!_ ”

“What’s your _deal,_ Chris?” asked Ding Dong, tugging his arm away, upset, fearful, concerned. “Just a while ago you were all gung-ho about saving the world! What happened?”

Chris grit his teeth and gestured sharply at the fake-distant rock formations. “Our friends are out there _dying_ and we can’t even help! It’s _pissing me off!_ ”

“Chris…” Less fearful, more concerned.

“ _It’s too real!_ ” Chris trailed off, sobering from the anger. “... _Arin and Ryan._..”

“What about Arin and Ryan?” asked Julian, effortlessly bouncing across the alien ground in their direction, a new, red blaster pinned to his hip, his shoes replaced by futuristic, astronautical-looking boots.

“…Where have _you_ been?” accused Ding Dong, raising an eyebrow and tilting his head to take in the new shoes.

“I found a new loadout in the craters,” was Julian’s nonchalant reply, but he flinched at Chris’s reaction.

“ _WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH ALL THESE LOADOUTS?_ ” exploded Chris.

“Oh,” groaned Brown Brick, shuddering to life behind Ding Dong and nearly giving the other Chicago native a fright. “They are a Let’s Player fad. _So_ fetch right now. I’m sure the viewing audience is thrilled you have so many already.”

Chris looked at Brown Brick, jaw dropped in disbelief. Julian glanced between the two, missing out. Ding Dong looked down at his laptop and huffed a bit, but spotting the error message again returned him to the task at hand. “Wish it would at least let me see what we’re in for.”

Chris frowned, but he shook his head and turned it from shock and disappointment into righteous, motivated anger. He pounded his fist into the palm of his opposite hand. “ _Fuck it!_ If we’re gonna go, let’s go!.”

 

On the other side of the portal, the world they entered was dark. Impenetrably dark and uncomfortably quiet. The hum of the ship was dampened, and Chris heard his own pulse whisper through his ears, felt Julian’s hand fumble for contact- warm in spite of the cold air. Before his eyes could adjust, a smoggy orange haze slowly rose over the horizon projected upon the distant walls, giving the impression that the sphere in which they stood was an egg, slowly opening to the light outside. An Easter egg, perhaps, considering the silhouetted designs slowly being illuminated around the border- or, more likely, a Halloween egg? The orange hue filled the windows of rough-hewn victorian attics, the gaps in tall, ornate, wrought-iron fences, and the empty eyes of lovingly carved Jack-o’-Lanterns.

Julian didn’t say anything, but his excitement was palpable. While the other human’s eyes were on the spookily bedecked skyline, Chris watched the lights frame the mass of wood and steel in front of them. Rising out of the darkness ahead and plunging out of sight into the depths below was a ladder to Hell, waves and curves and spirals of steel held board after board after board, the pumpkin spice glowing through their many gaps and knotholes. And finally, _finally_ there was enough light for the team to see each other, and to see _it-_ the little metal cart that was meant to ride these rails, a two-seater box emblazoned with “MPC” in droopy 70s lettering.

 

Chris frowned. Julian gulped. But Ding dong grinned.

“Oh, this is gonna be _easy._ ”


	29. Mad Flashback

“I don’t like this.” said Chris, already seated in the little ride car next to an equally unsettled Julian. He looked at Ding Dong and Brown Brick, who had crowded into a little control booth just behind the entry teleporter. “Why can’t _he_ ride instead?”

“The G-forces would destroy my corporeal form,” Brown Brick explained, not seeming to mind being crammed into the back corner of the booth. “Not preferable.”

“Like your fat ass is gonna fit in here, anyway” joked Ding Dong, but he squeezed out of the box and circled the cart, giving it a once-over. In the front end of the opening where the two humans sat was a metal bar that the two of them hung on to- Chris nervously tapping his ring against it while Julian maintained a white-knuckled grip with his non-lizard hand. “Look, this game is easy, okay? Trust me.”

“Ding Dong, if you kill us,” Chris stated, making deliberate eye contact with his alien friend, who seemed taken aback. “I’m gonna haunt the fuck outta you.”

“Don’t worry, Ding Dong,” Julian assuaged, fiddling with the bar. “It wouldn’t be like, an _angry_ haunting, it’d be like-”

“ _Trust_ me,” said Ding Dong, one pale, humanoid hand resting on Julian’s thick, twitchy fingers, the other on Chris’ strained knuckles. And he pushed, the bar moving with his action down toward the humans’ legs until it clicked, locking into place and revealing itself as a rudimentary safety mechanism. Chris and Julian looked at each other in mutual panic before twisting back to look at Ding Dong, who had hopped back into the control booth and gave the two a toothy grin and a thumbs up. “See you at the bottom!”

 

The cart jolted, and slowly began to roll forward, dented steel wheels bumbling over the rough planks that separated its riders from the encroaching pit that yawned before them, and leaned toward it, giving them a preview of coming attractions. Soon to be _rapidly_ coming attractions. It teetered, it tilted, and then it plunged into the darkness.

Chris’s life flashed before his eyes. He recalled growing up in Ireland with his family, learning how to use computers, how to draw, how to animate. Going to school, going to America, moving to LA, making videos, making let’s plays, meeting Ross and Arin. Having a bean in a can crash through his roof and deciding to plant it…

Lord Jaisus was he starting to regret planting that bean. Dropping out of his headspace, Chris came to as the cart clatter-clanked up to the top of a hill, rising above where the ride began and catching a glimpse of the control booth with the fully-formed bean in it- hunched over the controls, oozing, wide eyes focused on the glimmering hard light screen in the control booth window, the hooded figure of the other alien uncomfortably close over his shoulder.

To be fair, they had some good times with that bean- naming him Ding Dong, watching him grow up, learn everything about video games, meet Julian. The three of them collaborating. The three of them playing games together, laughing together. Going over to each others’ apartments to record, having an earthquake happen, slamming his face into a plate glass window…

Chris’s stomach dropped as they slipped over the top of the rise into another bottomless drop. The surroundings below were far too dark to see, illuminated only by brief explosive flashes. Chris saw snapshots of creatures scuttling about on the too-wide track, lit in the moment of their destruction as bomb after bomb launched from the rear of the vehicle, a flash of orange, a yellow blast wave, pitch black.

 _Where was Julian?_ Was he still in the car beside him? Chris could feel the cranial fluid sloshing around in his head as the cart shoved itself off the track and into the air, wheels sparking against the rails as it landed on another part of the track, was that a _jump?_ Oh god, there were more. In the bomb flash Chris could see pits in the track, gaps, dead ends- with a swerve of the cart, Chris jammed himself in the ear with his shoulder and a prodigious weight fell across his other side.

Oh, there was Julian. And there was the source of the sound he’d been hearing over the wind in his ears- Julian’s continuous screaming. The weight and sound was off of him in the next second, another sharp turn sending Julian back to his own side of the car, and slamming Chris against his soft mass, which he desperately clung to as a car with teeth and a tongue in the engine space reared up in front of them and vaporized- hit by another cart-launched bomb.

Up again, and _upside-down_ , there was no time to look around as they were thrown into a loop, the cart kicking up sparks as it dragged against the right-side rail, too fast to fall down, but too fast to control. Chris tasted blood, the wind sharp against his face, his hands balled up in Julian’s shirt, too fast, too dark, too long- _how long had it been?_

The cart twisted into a drift, skidding to a halt as Chris opened his eyes- just in time to brace himself as the ride car tilted and fell to its front face, spilling its contents out onto the smooth floor below. They’d made it! They’d made it.

 

Cool tile against his face, Chris gave himself time to breathe as sound slowly returned to the world. He pushed himself up with shaky arms, listening in to Julian’s excited, stuttering yammering and Ding Dong’s breathless, concerned joy. Brown Brick’s cape filled his vision, a gentle, bodily push keeping him from standing up.

“Chris? Oh fuck, Chris! Are you okay?” Ding Dong knelt down beside Chris and lifted his head with a touch, swiping his thumb across his human friend’s upper lip and coming away vibrant red.

“It’s just a nosebleed,” the words coming out of Chris’s mouth before the could think them. “All that throwing us around- great job, by the way.”

Ding Dong rolled his eyes, wiping his hand off on his red shirt, about to huff, but Chris spoke up again.

“I mean it. You did good, Ding Dong.”

The alien smiled, held out his hand. Chris took it, and Ding Dong pulled him to his feet.


	30. Get To It

“Yeah, ‘That’ll do, Pig’,” laughed Julian, tugging Ding Dong’s hand (and, by extension, Chris’s) toward the exit portal. “Now let’s get the _fuck_ outta here!”

“Agree. Definitely agree,” Chris grunted, eagerly stumbling after.

“Be prepared,” came the whisper from Brown Brick’s hood void over Chris’s shoulder. “The Boss is next.”

“Boss shmoss,” Ding Dong taunted. “We can take ‘em!”

“You sound like Matt,” Julian laughed, his grin dropping into a frown. “Oh...”

“Hey,” Ding Dong squeezed Julian’s hand. “We got this.”

 

 

Chris stepped off the teleporter and set foot on white tile. It was still dark, but he could make a rough guess about their location as he leaned back and gazed up at the sky box. “Is this a giant toy store?”

Rising stories and stories above them, towering shelves covered in towering boxes stretched toward the bulging drop ceiling- everything bowing outward around them, as if a fish-eye lens had imposed its view of reality on to the level.

“Looks like it,” Ding Dong agreed, inspecting the pile of hideous dolls blocking the end of the aisle behind them. “Not a very good one, if y’ask me.”

“Who’s the boss?” Asked Julian, his eyes being drawn upward as well. “Buzz Lightyear?”

“ **HALT, I AM REPTAR.** ”

“That’s not his voice,” Ding Dong muttered, turning away from the giant box of ‘LETGO’ toys on the shelf nearby to look across the arena at the newest point of interest: the mechanical bootleg Godzilla beginning its march from the end of the aisle. He recoiled in shock, taking a step back toward the doll pile.

“Yeah, that’s Reptar, alright,” grunted Chris, pulling the cyan-blue dagger from his waist, a glistening beam of light firing from his other hand as the Kingdom Key materialized in his grip. “An’ we didn’t even get to do tha puzzle.”

Reptar was big, bigger than any of them had expected, knowing the source material. The blue-green reptile’s vestigial arms wiggled four meters in the air, its neck and head rising almost two meters above that. It slowly stomped closer to the center of the arena, repeating its poorly-recorded catch phrase “ **HALT, I AM REPTAR** ”.

Julian scoffed, his new red sci-fi blaster at the ready. “Shouldn’t be too bad,” he took to the air, lining up a shot. “He’s got like, nine polygons!”

Brown Brick leaned toward Ding Dong. “Brownhood is the same for their species, is it?”

Ding Dong squinted, turning to look Brown Brick in the hood. “ _What?_ ”

An electrical crackle made Chris’s hair stand on end, followed by a bright flash and a thunderclap from above- he glanced up just in time to watch Julian get flung across the stage and into the pile of dolls. “Juulian!”

“Oh fuck, what is that!?” yelped Ding Dong, pointing back at Reptar.

Julian’s attack had blasted part of Reptar’s blocky green flesh away, revealing a far different scene underneath- unlike the glorious PS1-esque exterior, inside was whirring and winding and grinding machinery toiling away at making the monster move. And by god, did it start to move! With a jolt, its head bowed low to the ground, its tail rising in the air as a counterbalance. The red-eyed beast gave a primal, mechanical roar, and charged.

 

Chris started running to intercept it, but he quickly realized the artificial rex’s head alone matched his 185 centimeters and he didn’t have much hope of stopping it careening towards them- “Gah, _fuck!_ ” he dodged away to its left, jamming the Tartblade into its side as it passed. The boss roared and swung its head around to face him, but couldn’t slow itself, its momentum carrying it into the giant pile of playthings.

Ding Dong drug a laughing Julian out of the heap, the two of them dodging flying toys in their dash to the opposite end of the arena. “I didn’t think it was gonna be _that_ strong!” Julian cheered, a wild grin on his face.

“I think you broke right through the first phase of the fight!” an adrenaline-fueled Ding Dong replied, swinging open his laptop with his free hand. “Maybe we can make it even shorter if we-”

Reptar’s roar filled Chris’s ears and he nearly lost his footing, stumbling into a jog as he looked over his shoulder at the struggling dino. Behind him, Reptar righted itself, grabbing a mouthful of dolls and shaking its enormous head, flinging dismembered plush parts every which way. Ahead of him, Ding Dong, Julian, and Brown Brick huddled around the computer, seemingly nonchalant about the immediate danger. Chris gathered his breath and let out a roar of his own: “ _ **FUCKING RUUUN!!**_ ”

They were more than eager to follow his command, Ding Dong taking off to the left, Julian to the right, and Brown Brick leaping against the nearest box on the wall, managing to catch their upper body on the next shelf and scrambling up the rest of the way. Chris followed Ding Dong, the two of them drawing Reptar’s attention as it approached, sliding to a stop before the shelf and tromping after them.

“What’s the plan?” Chris shouted, and Ding Dong glanced over his shoulder, then back to the laptop.

“I don’t know yet!” The alien shouted back, glancing up again. “Just fuckin’ hit it!”

Chris sucked in a breath through his teeth, rolling his eyes as he slid to a stop, turning to face the boss. “Whatever you fuckin’ say, dude!”

Reptar wasn’t pealing full-tilt their way this time, straightening up as it came close- and Chris remembered that getting stomped on like mashed potatoes was a very real possibility here. Then again, giant monsters like this were par for the course, if the Keyblade buzzing in his hand had anything to say about it- maybe it was time to unleash his inner anime character?

Or maybe he wouldn’t have to- another blast of lightning erupted against Reptar’s side, blowing off one of its arms, a thick plume of smoke pouring out of the gap. It shrieked as if in pain, whirling around toward the other side of the ring, where Julian stood, switching his sci-fi gun for the lizard arm. Another shockwave-inducing roar, and it began to bound away- dropping its head toward Julian and raising its thick tail in the air to keep from falling on its face.

It was so easily distracted! If Chris could only shoot something, then maybe they could ping-pong it back and forth until they won? Strategy! But no, all he had was a shitty, blunt-ass melee weapon- _wait_. Raising the Keyblade in both hands, Chris took aim at the only keyhole he could see.

No effect. He’d have to insert it manually.

 

Julian was doing everything he could, coating Reptar’s big gross head with pikmin and waiting for the Noisy Cricket to recharge- but the robot rex would be shaking them off any minute, and he was cornered against a row of Mr. Friend boxes. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to fly fast enough if the boss snapped at him, and he still had no idea what his new boots could do, if anything- Julian’s thoughts were interrupted by a nearby _click-clunk_ , and the giant, pikmin-covered dinosaur froze. A _snap_ , a _sproing!_ The abomination of steel and rubber reared back with another screech, throwing Julian’s beet-people loose across the arena tile.

“JULIAN!” Chris called, running up from behind the flailing dinobot- “This way!”

Julian whistled, pulling all the pikmin up into formation, the waist-high wave trotting along behind the two harried humans, narrowly escaping stomp range. “What now, Chris?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Chris panted, nearly as sweaty from the heat and exertion as Julian was, coughing in the thick smog that had begun to pile up. Julian couldn’t remember which way they were running. Were they heading back to the end with the dolls? “I lost all my swords! Where’s Ding Dong?!”

Green and silver cut off Julian’s reply- Reptar’s tail caught them both off guard, smashing into the two and sending them flying- then landing with a crash into something far harder than plush dolls.

 

Chris grit his teeth and pulled himself up using the knockoff LEGO set that had fallen out of the box he’d hit. He couldn’t tell where Julian had landed, it was too dark, too foggy from the smoke pouring out of the still-screaming Reptar- no, that wasn’t Reptar making that noise!

“JULIAN! CHRIS!!” It was Ding Dong!

Out of the fog slid the alabaster alien, laptop tucked under one arm to free his hands, fumbling with the little bag of marbles he’d collected a few short levels ago, brow furrowed in concern, eyes wide in fright.

“Ding Dong!” Chris replied, far more jubilant than his teammate, then, far more terrified. “ _Oh fuck!_ _Ding Dong!!_ ”

With a grinding squeal of metal-on-metal, Reptar, all sparking wires and shimmering steel, swung out of the thick smokescreen of its own making- sweeping Ding Dong up in its open jaws.

“Oh fuck- OH FUCK!!” Ding Dong yelped, laptop sliding from his grip and hitting the ground with a singular _crack_ , marbles pouring from the bag in his hand and littering the tile.

“Ding Dong!” Chris yelped, fumbling to his friend’s aid, arms outstretched to catch the hand that Ding Dong was reaching between steel teeth- and immediately sliding on the loose marbles to fall ungracefully on his face, only able to push up in time to watch.

 

Reptar lifted its head, rising to its full height, sparking and burning from the shattered shoulders down… And shut its jaw with an almighty **CRUNCH**.

 

Chris’s stomach dropped to the newly-marbled tile floor. Time stopped. Four stories above, a pallid arm hung limply, caught between pixel-sharp teeth. A reptilian pupil narrowed to a slit.

Then, an explosion.

 

* * *

 

 

Leigh Daniel Avidan stumbled out of the portal into the brightly-lit room and took stock of himself.

He shouldn’t have left his shoes in that goddamned locker room, that was for sure. His feet hurt. His back hurt. He’d thought his jeans had been full of holes before, but this was insane. He was burned. Battered. Bleeding.

But still breathing.

 

“ _Arin?_ ”


	31. The Impermanence of Being

Reptar’s entire skull detonated, showering Chris with tiny shards of hot metal.

Then another explosion, shredding most of Reptar’s neck- then three more blasts in quick succession, making the monster’s torso more resemble a peeled banana than a dinosaur. And finally, _finally,_ with a long metal groan, a hydraulic hiss, and a thunderous crash, the beast fell.

“Oh no,” breathed a voice from up behind Chris, whose stomach was discovering new lows. It was Julian, straddling the pile of faux LEGO they’d landed in, having made it halfway over before… well… “Ding Dong…?”

“He… He beefed it,” Chris croaked, on his knees, staring down as the marbles on the ground turned red and flickered away. He regretted the phrasing as Julian finished his dismount and plodded up beside him.

“Well,” Julian started, gently, hesitantly, then more resolutely. “We knew this day would come.”

They had, hadn’t they. Chris looked up at him, equal parts impressed and confused. He tried to say something more, but his mouth was dry and his tongue wouldn’t cooperate. Julian helped him to his feet, a stabilizing hand gripping his shoulder just a bit too tight. He shook his head, shrugging off Julian’s hand. “He didn’t-… There’s no body.”

“Can’t complete his wishes then,” Julian muttered, and Chris fixed him with a demanding stare. A pang, jealousy perhaps. It was no surprise that they’d talked about this very thing, but now all the time Julian Had Spent with him that Chris Had Not was welling thickly in his throat.

“What did he want?”

“He didn’t really care,” Julian’s eyes were filled with tears. “He just said to throw him in a ding dong ditch.”

Chris threw an arm around Julian’s shoulders, pulling the bigger man close as he started to sob. “ _He fuckin’ would,_ ” Chris spat, melancholy choked with rage at the postxenous joke and their friend’s irreverence. An irreverence they shared, true, but grief was irrational. “ _The bastard._ ”

 

It had grown quiet, the hiss of smoke and the crackle of electrical fire gave way to a low hum and Julian’s hitching breaths. A gentle wheeze broke the silence, and Chris looked up, over Julian’s shuddering wings to the hooded lump standing by the crotch of the collapsed cyber-creature from the Cretaceous. Really not the dick Chris wanted to see.

“The fuck do _you_ want?”

“There is so very much to learn,” Brown Brick spoke. “You understand so little.”

“Our friend just died, asshole.”

“Even now you delay his resurrection-”

“Resurr-” Chris began, but Julian cut him off.

“ _He can come back?!_ ”

“Did they not advertise joining the Immortal Ranks of the Let’s Players? Does your planet not have extra lives in their games? That must be so frustrating, starting at the beginning every-”

“ _How?_ ” Julian demanded, dropping Chris to face Brown Brick. “How do we get him back?”

“It is nothing complicated,” Brown Brick replied, nodding toward the remains of the virtual theropod. “You defeated the boss, so he should appear in the break room. Through that portal.”

A breeze swirled past Chris’s face, clearing a space in the smoke, revealing the cracked bubble of Reptar’s eye case lying loose on the floor. It glowed a soft cyan, a cool contrast to its previous orange. Julian jolted forward, but held tight to Chris’s sleeve, hesitating.

“If you’re fucking with us...” he threatened, but Brown Brick seemed to ignore him, crossing to the teleporter and disappearing with a flash. The humans followed solemnly, afraid to hope, but nowhere else to go.

 

Chris and Julian winced, assaulted by bright LEDs as they entered the vibrantly red room. Chris shielded his eyes, squinting. He heard Julian mumble something, but they both spoke up as their eyes finally adjusted. “Ding Dong!”

Sure enough, there he stood! The source of the red tone of the room, Ding Dong waited in a cylinder of light, a column that encapsulated his pale form. He didn’t move, but they didn’t mind- the two ran recklessly, joyously across the room. Julian took to the air in a flying tackle and Chris pulled at Ding Dong’s shirt, the three colliding in a potentially bruise-inducing hug. Ding Dong came alive beneath them, and “ _OOF_ ” at the impact, a gasp of breath, a sheepish chuckle.

“Did we win?”

 

* * *

 

Dan was burned, battered and bleeding, but still breathing.

And so was Arin.

Dan glanced up from his beloved (and now “vintaged” beyond repair) Rush shirt to the primary feature of the room- the vivid pink tube against the wall ahead, inside of which floated one Arin Hanson.

“ _Arin?_ Arin! Oh my god!” Every thought from mere moments ago was put from his mind as he dashed to the tube, his hands reaching right through the holographic walls and colliding with Arin’s pink, Kirby-emblazoned shirt, which he gripped two eager handfuls of and pulled.

 

Arin was hit with a few things as he was yoinked from the pod, scrambling for balance to keep both himself and Dan from tumbling to the floor.

His arm was still attached, for one. And for another- “I can’t believe my last words were _“eat my pussy”_ , dude. Really puts things in perspective.”

Dan laughed.

Dan laughed and Dan sobbed, collapsing against Arin’s more sturdy form, the two of them sliding to the ground until they reached equilibrium. Arin looked down at him in shock, taking in every scuffed and scrappy detail of the man he’d spent the last several years hosting a show with, touring with, acting with, singing with.

“Dan? ...Oh. Fuck.”

 

* * *

 

 


	32. Your grain? No, Migraine

“So if we killed you, you’d come back?”

“No, unfortunately. I must respectfully request you do not. That would require a Recovery Node, and mine is… No longer equipped.”

“Oh good, so you _can_ take ‘em out,” sighed Julian, rubbing the back of his neck.

“It may not be so easy as that, but yes, in theory, you can _‘take ‘em out’_.”

“Reassuring,” Ding Dong joked, and Julian squeezed his hand. “Julian…?”

“So what now?” groaned Chris, lying on the floor of the Break Room, everything around him so bright he could feel his brain pulsing behind his eyeballs. “Are we done with the stupid trials?”

“You can be, if you wish. However, there may well be more ahead if you share my goals of ending this destructive cycle, and perhaps saving your planet.”

“Fuck!” Chris grunted, rolling over and throwing his arms over the back of his head. He grumbled into the featureless expanse of the floor, then rolled to his side and whined. “Julian? Can you kill me? Jus’ fuckin’ bust my head in with with that lizard gun?”

“Chris!” reprimanded Julian, hands on his hips as he turned to face the suffering artist. He rolled his eyes. “Okay, hold still.”

Ding Dong pulled the bag of marbles from his hip and looked it over. “I don’t see why these didn’t heal you guys. I threw ‘em all over the place-”

“ _Do not throw those in here!_ ” yelped Brown Brick, a rattling hiss escaping from their hood. “They do not heal because they are _mine!_ ”

Ding Dong lowered the package, raising an eyebrow at a cowering Brown Brick. “Wh- they’re yours?”

“ _No! Mine! Bomb! Tee-Enn-Tee!_ ”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Oh my god, is that why Reptar exploded?!” asked Julian, decidedly not bashing Chris’s head in, sitting beside him and resting a hopefully-comforting palm on his back instead. Chris pulled his beanie down over his entire head and groaned.

“Yes,” hissed Brown Brick. “Those in Red wield incredible destructive power. Though perhaps, in your case, creative power as well.”

“Can he create me a new head? This one sucks!”

“That is not beyond him. The Let’s Players create new avatars at their whim, change things as simple as their eye color or as complex as their species-”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t ye, Julian?”

“Chris, I swear to Christ.”

Ding Dong looked around the room at the red highlights, the red alien language on the walls, the red beam pouring from the pedestal nearby. “All this because I came in wearing a red shirt?”

“The spectrum is carefully maintained, but you may change if you so choose.”

“Hey guys, turns out we’re all on the spectrum!”

“Chris! You’re askin’ for it!”

“I probably will,” Ding Dong hummed. “How do we get out of here, by the way?”

“AUGH! **Juuulian!!** I’ve got a headache the size of **your fucking** **ass** and you’re **not** helping!”

“What do you want me to do?? Find you an island level with a nice big beach?”

“Find him an alien woman with nice big bags of ice for his head, more like,” Ding Dong inserted, leaning over the two with a smirk.

“Y’know what, I’d be into that,” Chris replied, rolling over onto his back, face still covered by his hat. “Sexually.”

“I don’t see how you’d get turned on by that-”

“By the ice?”

“By the woman.”

“You know what, this is getting too stupid,” Chris groaned and shoved himself to his feet, turning to face the ceiling with a shrouded mug and a raised fist (though the ring was less intimidating than the swords he no longer had). “ **Let us outta here!!** ”

 

The floor rumbled, just like the tutorial before. Chris pulled the beanie from his face to look, and immediately regretted it- the seams of the room came apart, the four walls and the ceiling lifting away. If he thought the room was bright before, the light beaming in from outside was blinding- stabbing through his eyes, soaking his brain in searing heat and sending shockwaves down his spine into his jellified legs. He heard Ding Dong’s voice in his ears, felt Julian’s thick arms catch him- then both feelings were drowned out by The Roar.

Chris forced an eye open and looked around- and the first thing he saw… was Ethan. The young man in blue was scared, looking up into the lights and around into the dim distance- eye met narrowed eyes and Ethan’s terror changed to recognition, confusion- ‘what are you doing here?’ he mouthed, inaudible over the noise. Chris shrugged in Julian’s hold, and the Mexican wordlessly adjusted Chris’s arm over his shoulder (wordlessly as far as Chris could tell, the vibration he felt could be the familiar buzz of his friend’s voice or it could be the continuous all-frequency vacuum of The Roar- that was the only word Chris could think of for it, it filled his ears, his eyes, his skull, his whole being, like he was in that blue pixel ocean of the Lord of the Rings lake again, straining for breath, swimming for his life, drowning. Drowning.

Going numb from the vibration, he finally spotted the source of it all- the aliens. Ahead of him, just past Brown Brick, was the edge of the floor, and beyond that was a squid with eyeballs filling the suckers on its tentacles, a mound of teeth, a box with a face carved into it, a ball of hair, a bird with too many heads to count, a lizard that was more mouth than lizard, and beyond that, more and more silhouettes stretching far, far into the distance, out of reach of the limelight that showered them in inescapable illumination. Then, Julian joined in the screaming, his arms wrapped tightly enough around Chris that his ribs creaked.

Starting to panic, Chris looked about the stage on which they stood- There was Ding Dong, curling in on himself, hands covering his nublets, eyes wide, pupils shrunk to pinpricks- Ethan, much the same, gripping a plush Fazbear toy in one hand, the other tangled in his wavy hair- Arin, Arin was alive! But Dan, Arin held him much like Chris imagined he and Julian must look. The rest was out of his view, but of what he could see they all had their mouths open, a communal scream. One that, for some reason, Chris didn’t feel the need to join. He turned back to Brown Brick, who seemed to meet his gaze with the emptiness within their hood. Eerily stoic, silent, patient. Everything began to fade, the Roar of the crowd wore thin, and then… silence.


	33. Goldfish Bagging

Everything began to fade, then, the Roar of the crowd wore thin, and then… silence.

 

But Chris was still awake. They’d just teleported away from the stage and the lights and the Roar… “Oh fuck… Oh god,” Julian.

“Julian? Chris!” Ding Dong. Their hands were on him, but in his periphery he heard other names and voices…

“Arin!” “Suzy!” “ _Hey_ _Suze…_ ” “Danny??” “Oh shit, Matt, Ryan, what happened?” “What happened to _you?_ ” “Ethan? Shit, did you die, too?” It was honestly a lot more welcome a cacophony. A comfort to hear them all in one place. Chris leaned into Julian's sweaty, smelly shirt- and sneezed.

“Chris! Oh Jesus, what the fuck?” Julian pushed him off and held him at arm’s length, jolting his sore neck and making his vision swim- but he could see Julian, could see the thick splatter of deep maroon across his previously purple shirt. Ding Dong grasped his other shoulder and pushed his hat back, brushing brown hair out of his face.

“Chris? Chris, look at me, okay?” Chris closed one eye to focus on Ding Dong’s face- “Both eyes, Chris. Come on.”

“What’s wrong with him?” A mumbled chorus of concern, one or two voices rising above the sound with actual questions. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“He’s badly concussed-” “I think it’s internal bleeding-” “ _Nah, I’ll be alright, just a little roughed up-”_

Chris couldn’t stay awake any longer, his head lolling to the side as the voices muddled together into a pleasant hum.

 

“Damn it,” Ding Dong hissed, lowering Chris to lie down on the ground between them. “I think all the noise aggravated his head injury.”

“That big announcer voice probably didn’t help,” Julian groaned, picking his ear with his non-lizard hand, his voice a bit raspier than usual, and that was saying something. “I think I blew blew my voice from screaming so much...”

“I think we all did,” grumbled a groggy-sounding Ethan, who had gravitated toward Matt and Ryan, a sassy glance directed at the latter.

“I think I yelled hard enough to set off my gag reflex,” Ryan muttered, holding a clenched fist to his lips, “I think I’m gonna hurl,” and Matt put a hand on his shoulder with a sympathetic ‘ _you better fucking not’._

 

Ding Dong opened the laptop, surprised that it had teleported with them. It logged into Xertz immediately, prompting him for a ‘temporal alignment’. He ignored it, reopening the map. “Oh my god?”

The nine of them sat on a large square platform with raised edges, but according to the map, this was the rooftop of a skyscraper- and some distance below them were _thousands_ of colored dots. Ding Dong slid the computer off his lap and stood, hurrying to the edge of the platform. Sure enough, far below was a bustling cityscape, the surrounding rooftops forming a loosely-arranged stairway, divided by pitfalls leading down, down, down to illuminated streets full of alien figures, almost inaudible at this distance, moving at random from place to place, points too far away for Ding Dong to discern.

Something about it sparked Ding Dong’s memory, though, He many not have known this exact scene, but there had been something very similar on Earth, in Los Angeles.

“There’s a marketplace down there!” Ding Dong observed. Grinning, he turned to face the collection of humans on the narrow rooftop behind him. “we could buy some healing items- maybe there’s a potion seller down there-...”

“ _Poeshun sellah,_ ” Danny intoned, a brief chuckle turned into a shallow cough, drawing silent, sympathetic looks from the rest of the group. “ _What?_ ”

Ding Dong cleared his throat, looking to the edge of the roof. “I’m going to go check it out.”

“NO!”

He whipped back, catching Julian mid-action- he’d lunged forward, a hand hanging in the air inches from Ding Dong’s own, the unexpected eye contact freezing him in place. Ding Dong stared, and Julian gulped, settling back down on his knees next to Chris, giving his unconscious form a nervous glance.

“Don’t… Don’t go alone, at least?”

“I’ll go with you,” Suzy volunteered, standing up.

“But we just got back togetherrr,” Arin murmured.

Ethan stumbled to his feet, beating Matt to the punch. “Me too!”

“We’ll be gone ten minutes.” said Suzy, giving her husband a kiss and patting a pouting Dan on the head. “You won’t even miss us!”

“ _Miss you already though,_ ” Dan grunted, pushing himself up on a shaky arm.

“Stay close to each other, okay?” she cheered. “Be safe, be our good boys!”

Arin nodded, his buster arm spinning up with a mechanical whir. Julian saluted, wincing as he knocked himself in the head with his lizard cannon. Matt and Ryan looked at each other and scooted closer to the visibly gun-wielding members of Team Earth.

“Alright,” Ding Dong sighed, turning back to the edge. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s play?” asked Ethan, to no response. He laughed at his own joke as he followed Ding Dong and Suzy down to the next rooftop, more out of nerves than humor. After all, he was a failure.

 

He and Suzy both were, according to that freaky announcer voice. Back on that stage, they’d been soundly chewed out for their gameplay choices; welcomed and allowed to join the Let’s Players, but relegated to some kind of lower tier. Something about proving themselves, too, but the details were clouded by the headache. They’d died before completing the trials, and with no teammates to carry on in their place they’d gotten booted straight to the Breakroom. Looking at Suzy as they hopped down the makeshift steps, it was clear she’d made it farther than he had- she had a whole new outfit, a cool sword, and murder in her eyes. Ding Dong, however… Ethan had no idea how well it had gone for him. Aside from the smell, the space-farer was in pristine condition. He must have died as well, and with only one powerup. Maybe Ethan could feel a little confident about that? Maybe he’d already beaten one alien! If so, how hard could the rest be?

Though, it started to get more intimidating the closer they got to ground level. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop, the noise of the crowd was starting to pick up. Glancing over the edge was a mistake- the aliens below were absurdly large- hell! They were absurd in general- Ding Dong could pass as human in comparison! Ding Dong put out a hand to stop them, pulling out his laptop and popping it open.

“What should we look for?” asked Suzy, scanning the street below. They were only two stories up now, and the scene below had become much clearer. It really was a street market, stalls shaded with canvas awnings in various colors, aliens serving aliens who lined up and crowded stalls, who milled about, who spoke to each other, who… popped in and out of existence? Ethan rubbed his eyes and squinted back down at the crowd. Sure enough, one of the stalls’ proprietors vanished into thin air and was almost instantly replaced by an alien that looked nothing like the previous one- and it was instantly mobbed by a collection of equally strange creatures. It was… strange. To say the least.

“I don’t know the language yet, but we need to find some kind of exchange center, like a bank, or an ATM.”

“Need to get us some alien moolah?” Suzy mused, leaning over the edge for a better view. She sighed. “I’m guessing we’re not in a PVP-enabled zone, everybody looks like they’re getting along.”

“You want to _fight them?_ ” Ethan squeaked. “ _Why?_ Aren’t we trying to make a good impression?”

“They know who we are already,” Ding Dong deadpanned. “They’ve been streaming us.”

He lifted his laptop for the two humans to see- logged in to the KKG livestream. 46,068,291 viewers.

“Oh my god,” said Suzy, looking at the back of her own head through the display. “That’s so many aliens!”

Ding Dong nodded, tapping into the Game Grumps stream. 92,483,176 viewers.

“How many aliens are even _on_ this ship?!”

“Planets’ worth. Galaxies.” Back up on the rooftop, Arin, Matt, and Julian had formed a circle around Dan and Ryan, and Chris’s unconscious body. Ding Dong stared into the monitor blankly, eyes half-lidded. “A handful at a time, for who knows how long.”

“Down there!” Suzy called, tugging Ding Dong’s sleeve. Ethan followed her line of sight- and discovered a line just as orderly. A short queue of aliens was arranged in front of a kiosk, though it looked more like an old boardwalk fortuneteller machine, like… “Is that a Zoltar machine?”

It looked a bit like one, if Zoltar could summon holograms and make equipment disappear- that was what seemed to be happening, after all. The monster at the head of the line had been decked out in golden armor a moment ago- the sword pinned to its back fading away like a mirage. “Are they selling their equipment?”

“What do we sell, though? I mean, I’ve got this flashlight-”

“Let’s just get down there. We’ll figure it out.”


	34. Market Research

Suzy, Ethan, and Ding Dong clambered down into an unoccupied alleyway and cautiously ventured out into the main strip, not a single creature batting an eye at them as they passed.

“Let’s try to stick together,” Suzy called over the noise. Ethan was close behind her, and Ding Dong behind him, the three filing into the crowded aisle, doing their best to make a straight shot toward the famous Tom-Hanks-shrinking robot box. The aliens were surprisingly chill, none seemed to care about the three little humanoids rushing through. Mainly because there were even smaller beasts to look out for! Some of the aliens here were knee-height or shorter, and Suzy kept stopping for them- causing Ethan to crash into her, and Ding Dong to crash into Ethan, and-

One of the big aliens, a bear-like beast with black eyes strung across its chest like an embedded necklace, wandered right through them. Rather, _they’d_ gone through _it,_ like a bad hitbox glitch.

“They’re not here,” Ding Dong muttered aloud, still somehow audible over the noise. “None of them are _here._ ”

“Oh, that’s too weird!” Ethan yelped. “Are they- Is this like a hubworld or something?”

“That’s where you go after the tutorial, isn’t it?”

“But _we’re_ actually here, right?” asked Ethan, and Ding Dong rolled his eyes.

“Considering we just _collided_ with each other, I’d say we are.”

“Let’s just get to Zoltar and sell our junk, okay?”

Suzy was unnerved. It would have been exciting to finally meet all these new species, but having them quietly wander by like ghosts? Ignoring them entirely? The murmur of the crowd rumbled on, and the three resumed their mission.

 

“You gonna be alright, Matt?”

“Nah, I’m fine,” Matt sighed, fiddling with the cloth hanging out of the molotov bottle on his hip. “What killed you?”

Arin awkwardly cleared his throat. “Uh, some robot… Ryan?”

Matt glanced back at Ryan, who was mumbling something with Danny. “I have no idea. He was fine for a while and then just…” Matt’s throat was dry, his adam’s apple bobbed as he tried to swallow. “And he’s back but I think he’s still not like, a hundred percent, you know?”

Over Matt’s shoulder, Ryan laughed at something Julian had said, the smaller man stifling a giggle of his own. Arin scratched at his beard, resting his other hand on Matt’s shoulder. “We’ll think of something. Ryan’s gonna be okay.”

Matt was still uneasy, but he mustered a smile. “Thanks, Dad.” Then, with an exaggerated fluster: “ _UH, D-DUDE- I meant-_ ”

“Why, Matthew,” Arin started, snickering. “I’m flattered you see me as a father figure-”

“I have enough dads!” protested Matt.

“ _Finally,_ enough dads!” Arin goofed, and Matt cracked, his laughter drawing the attention of the other three, who smiled fondly in spite of the circumstances.

Danny wrapped his cape around himself like a blanket, trying to disguise a grin with a pout. “That’s not cool, _I’m_ supposed to be Daddy!”

“But Danny,” Arin turned to him, taking on a high-pitched affect. “Y’gotta help me _prehnk m’dayde!_ ”

That made Dan lose it- a laugh bubbling its way out of his aching ribs and spreading to the others, whether they were in on the joke’s origins or not. Julian imitated the voice, Arin started to recite the source material, Dan and Ryan leaned on each other, shaking with giggles, and Matt looked up at the dark skybox, a lopsided grin on his face and a spark of hope in his chest.

Then Chris coughed and the laughed faded. Chris, remnants of his nosebleed crusting over down his lip and on his orange shirt, sat up and rubbed his bleary eyes, wiping a copious amount of crudules free from where they’d stuck. He squinted across the quiet group and coughed again into his hand. “Sum say I luk like me da’.”

“Chris!” cried Julian, pulling the man into another bone-crushing hug.

“God, Dude, you look like shit!” laughed Ryan.

“ _Better than you,_ ” Chris hissed, his breath being squeezed from him by the over-enthused Mexican. “ _Julian, yer gonna kill me-_ ”

“Sorry! Sorry.”

“Chris, hey-” Matt approached, crouching next to Ryan. “What happened to you, anyway?”

“I dunno,” Chris replied, wiping his grungy hand on his grungy shirt. “Was just a headache to start with, but after that bullshit on the stage-”

“Yeah, that big announcer voice probably didn’t help either, huh?” Ryan scoffed.

Chris squinted at him. “What _voice?_ ”

 

The Zoltar machine loomed above them, though the figure inside wasn’t human, it was dressed much as they’d expected. Something silky and shimmery, with dangly bits of jewelry here and there, covering a form deliberately obfuscated by wrinkles and hair. The only strange thing was the long, barracuda-like snout stretching from under the faux turban. Suzy was the first to approach, her arrival signaled by a blue pane of light appearing in the glass of Zoltar’s enclosure. There were several words and numbers flickering across the surface, the most stable of which read “MORTEM3R” and “KKG” then more in a language she couldn’t read- then numbers, rising numbers. 8345, then 8993, then 9416, then more- and below that, in and out of English were tiny messages and tiny numbers. “3 – Welcome newbie!” “1 – Join GOLDENGUILD for Yellow.” “2 – Melee Queen <3 <3” and so on and so forth. Ethan squinted at the screen and started to make himself dizzy trying to read them all.

Suzy frowned. “All I want to do is sell this dumb sword!”

With a flash, the sword and its sheath disappeared into a fading afterimage, its weight leaving Suzy’s hip as it did.

“Yes!” she cheered, hopping away from the machine and letting the menu disappear. “Next!”

Ethan stepped up, then, a new menu appearing in front of him with ETHAN and CRANKGAMEPLAYS. The numbers here started around three thousand or so, but were rising just as fast, with just as many happy little messages. Ethan looked down at the plush Freddy Fazbear on his belt. “Um, sell the bear?”

The blue screen flashed red, a thick red panel of light- a sign reading something in the alien language- appeared in the air between him and the glass.

“What did I do?!” he yelped, jumping back- but the panel disappeared and the menu returned just as quickly. “Uh, s-sell the uh, Fazbear? The plush?” That one worked, he already felt the Fazbear fading away. “Okay! Your turn, Ding Dong.”

“You sold the bear?” asked Ding Dong, taking a shrugging Ethan’s place at the machine. DINGDONGVG, ONEYPLAYS, starting at 10,000 and rising rapidly-

“Holy shit! Why’s your number so high?”

“No idea,” Ding Dong admitted, nonchalantly. “Sell marbles.” And there they went.

Hip freed, Ding Dong pulled the laptop out from under his arm and brought it back to the map screen.

“Now that we’ve got some pocket change-”

“Okay, wow, thanks,” said Ethan, feigning hurt with a hand on his heart.

“-Let’s find somebody selling health potions.”

Zooming in to the street, Ding Dong (with Suzy and Ethan over his shoulders) browsed the icons signifying the stalls along either side. “Oh! What’s that?” asked Suzy, tapping a lacquered nail against the screen.

“Looks like the Let’s Players are already violating the Geneva Convention,” Ding Dong scoffed, taking in the little red crosses in a narrow offshoot of the main path, the only steady objects on screen besides the wireframe landscape.

“Don’t these aliens predate the Geneva Conventions?” asked Ethan, squinting as Ding Dong and Suzy started walking. “Do they even apply to aliens? Would aliens even follow them if they _did_ apply?”

 

“Chris,” Julian prodded, tenderly. “We all heard it, right?”

“Yeah, the whole **‘A warm welcome to the new Let’s Player candidates from YouTube’** thing?” Arin asked, slipping into a cartoonish announcer voice. “You didn’t hear all that?”

“None of that, just all the screaming. All you guys screaming?”

“I mean, yeah, we were screaming,” Matt admitted.

“That shit fuckin’ hurted,” grunted Ryan, crossing his arms.

“I can’t be the _only one_ that didn’t hear,” Chris pouted, looking from face to concerned face.

“It- It didn’t hurt all that much for me,” Danny offered, and Arin looked at him, eyebrow raised.

“Really?”

“ _Of course not!_ I felt like my brain was eating itself and shitting needles of pure hate! I just didn’t want Chris to feel left out.”

“Thanks, Dan,” Chris said, dully. “Preesh. ‘Preciate it.”

“It’s probably a weird fluke in the system,” Arin hummed. “Like a glitch or something. Every game’s got bugs, right?”

Julian perked up then, leaning in to Chris’s ear. “ _Where’d Browntown go?_ ”

“ _Shit, I have no idea,_ ” Chris murmured back. Brown Brick had been on that stage with everybody- did they get caught? “ _They're probably fine-_ ”

“ _Why are we whispering?_ ” asked Arin, in an overly-loud whisper of his own.

“I said, where the **FUCK IS DING DONG** , you nosy dickhole!” Chris roared, and laughter bubbled from the other five.

“He went down with Suzy and Ethan to try to find some healing items.”

“He _went down on_ Suzy and Ethan?”

“Dude,” said Arin, deathly serious. “That’s my wife.”

Dan laughed at that, drawing a smile out of Arin soon after.

“Seriously though, that’s my wife.”

“Julian, go check on ‘em.” Chris ordered, a dismissive wave in Julian’s direction.

“Wh, Why? They left like, two minutes ago?”

Chris looked at Julian, deadpan. “A lot can happen in two minutes,” he huffed, his voice low. “Come on, man, you can _fly,_ it’ll take ten seconds.”

“You can fly?” asked Matt, overhearing. Suddenly everyone was very interested, all eyes turning their way. “Like, actually _fly?_ ”

“Kind of?” Julian understated, turning nervously and spreading the purple bat wings that had previously blended in with his shirt. He’d almost forgotten about them!

“Are those real?”

“Uh, I’m not really sur- _CHRIS!_ ” Chris had reached up and grabbed the tip of one phalange, tugging it to take a closer look- but Julian yanked it back with a yelp- “Don’t _do_ that!” -and jumped out of his reach, catching a few seconds of hangtime with a forceful flap.

“Holy shit!” Matt exclaimed- “How is that _possible?_ ”

“Where can I get _me_ some of those?” said Ryan, grinning wildly.

“Julian, that is so fucking cool!” The gushing began from all sides, spurring discussion amongst the Youtubers of what this alien technology was truly capable of, congratulations to Julian for achieving the miracle of self-propelled flight, questions, questions, _questions!_

“ _Stop it!_ ” Julian cried, taking to the air. “You guys are gonna give me a boner, and I really don’t think the aliens are gonna understand that!”

Then he was gone, over the edge of the platform and down into the cityscape, leaving behind Chris’s wry laughter to fill the otherwise awkward silence.

 

“Hey, this place looks like the break room,” Ethan babbled as they entered the alley. The rounded platforms on either side of the narrow aisle did reflect the ones in the Breakroom, but no lights emanated from them, the light instead coming from a sign glowing white along the walls- symbols in an angular alien language to the left, a long line drawing away from them, around the dead end, and back to the entrance on the right, splitting into a branching pattern near the end.

Ding Dong approached one of the platforms, waving a hand as if it were motion-activated. “Huh. Any idea how to activate this sucker?”

“Well,” thought Suzy, frowning. “When you get killed it turns yellow?”

“What? No it doesn’t.” Ding Dong turned to her, eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, it’s blue, right?” said Ethan, smiling confidently until they turned to stare at him.

“Okay, so it was different for each of us,” inferred Ding Dong, tugging at his red t-shirt to emphasize. “I thought it made sense being red, though, for the support class?”

“Is that what red means? What does yellow mean?”

“Oh shit, what’s blue, then?”

“I… Don’t know, actually. Just red. I thought purple might be big guns or something, but Julian-”

“Yeah?”

“Oh hey, speak of the devil,” greeted Ding Dong, as Julian dropped out of the sky to land in front of the trio. Suzy squealed.

“Julian! You can fly?!”

“Not you, too!”

“Well forgive me for being excited for you!”

“Nah, sorry,” Julian groaned, rolling his eyes with a nod toward the skyscraper behind him. “Everybody went nuts about it up there, too.”

“Julian,” Ding Dong chided. “Did they really run you off that easy?”

“I don’t like the attention,” Julian pouted. “Really though, Chris woke up and wanted me to go find you guys.”

“Really? How’s he doing?” asked Ding Dong. Suzy and Ethan glanced at each other.

“Pissy as ever. Still got a headache, I think.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet that announcer voice wasn’t too good for that.”

“He said he didn’t hear the voice.”

Ding Dong gave a nervous laugh. “Of course he did, it was kind of hard to miss!”

“No, seriously, he didn’t hear a thing! No idea what it sounded like, no idea why we were all screaming…?”

“Julian...” Ding Dong hummed, looking over his human teammate. “Things have been rough for you, too, y’know.”

“I mean… I’m okay, I’m tough.”

“Julian, come here.”

The platform began to emanate a soft white glow as Julian approached, intensifying into a searchlight-bright beam that revealed a white crate floating within. Ding Dong brightened, taking the breadbox-sized plastic crate in his hands and pulling it out of the light.

“Julian! Activate the other platforms! Ethan, Suzy, grab the – wait, where’s Suzy?”

“Oh,” Julian pointed out of the alley off into the crowd. “She’s over there talking to Brown Brick.”


	35. Insatiable for Novelty

“Hi there, friend!” Suzy greeted. She offered a smile and a wave, though she wasn’t sure if the hooded being before her understood the sentiment (or if it was capable of returning it, seeing as she couldn’t tell if it had any mouth, eyes, or arms.)

But it replied all the same with a questioning “Hello?”

“You can talk!” Suzy didn’t know what to expect, the sack creature didn’t show much, except for skinny brown legs and the little ear-like appendages showing through the rough fabric of the hood. “You’re so spooky, I love it! And I love your little..?”

Suzy put her hands up to either side of her head- the stranger’s hood tilted. “My nublets?”

“Oh! My friend Ding Dong has those! What’s your name?”

It nodded. “My name is Brown Brick.”

“Is that...” Suzy grimaced, “ _really_ your name?”

“Suitably insulting, I assure you, Mortem3r.”

“How do you-?! Have you been watching the stream?”

“Not quite. Mortem3r, while the pleasantries are _greatly_ appreciated, time wears thin for your planet Earth.”

Suzy felt… disappointed. “So Chris was telling the truth.”

“Oney has his moments. I feel that I backed the right silt-fish on this one.”

“The right what?”

“Suzy!” Ethan called- Suzy turned, catching a lightweight white cooler as it hit her in the chest. “Sorry! It’s hard to carry two! Who’s your friendy-friend?”

“ _Ethan!_ Don’t throw things at people!”

“You caught it though!” Ding Dong chuckled, adjusting his own crate. His impressed tone turned taciturn as he greeted the other alien in their midst. “Brown Brick.”

“How’d you find us?” asked Julian, dropping to a landing beside Ethan.

“This is the Starboard Market,” Brown Brick explained, as if that meant anything. “It is many Let’s Players’ first blush with other species. And capitalism.”

“How come nobody’s here, though?” asked Ethan. “Like, _here-_ here?”

“Another fad. One we can use to our benefit.” Brown Brick’s hood twitched, looking side to side. “It would be more expedient to speak with all of you at once. We should regroup with OneyNG and the others.”

“Julian?” Julian straightened up, nearly dropping his crate as Ding Dong turned his way. “Can you fly me up there? We’ve kept Chris waiting long enough.”

“I mean, I can _try_ ,” Julian hemmed, scratching at his beard. “I’m carrying a lot of weight around as it is-”

“ _Julian..._ ”

“You _know_ I’m not a strong guy, I don’t lift things- I’m lucky I can fly at all!”

“ _Julian._ ”

And that was that.

 

“It _would_ be a Sonic level that killed me,” Arin huffed, rolling his eyes.

“I think you’re the only one who got legit killed by an enemy, dude,” Ryan mused, lifting his hat to run a hand through his long hair.

“Nah,” Chris cut in, inspecting whatever it was he’d just pulled from his nose. “Ding Dong got vored by our boss.”

Matt snorted, and that got Ryan laughing. “Dude, did you picture it?!”

“Oh my god, yeah! Why would you say it like that??”

“What, our _boss?_ ” asked Chris, squinting. “Our boss, Reptar?”

Ryan’s laughter turned into a joyful shrieking. Danny glanced up at Arin with a raised eyebrow and a ‘Jewish mom’ voice: “ _Mistah Reptah, your four o’clock is heah~_ ”

“ **GRAAAH NOT RIGHT NOW, I’M SYNERGIZING!!** ” Arin roared, bringing his wrists up to his chest like a T-Rex.

“He didn’t sound like that,” Chris objected, glancing over his shoulder at him.

“ **THIRD QUARTER STOCKS ARE DOWN!!** ”

“He didn’t _sound_ like that-” Chris called over the rising laughter, the other YouTubers losing their shit.

“ **SEND DING DONG TO MY OFFICE, I NEED TO SPEAK WITH HIM!** ”

“ **HE DIDN’T** _ **FUCKING**_ **SOUND LIKE THAT!** _Fuck..._ ”

“Whoa, Chris, hey,” Arin backpedaled, the laughter falling quiet as Chris leaned back, pinching his newly-bleeding nose shut. “It was a joke...”

“My fucking _friend_ died, you ass!”

“Yeah, but-” Arin defended. “He’s okay _now,_ right?”

“You _know_ he’s not!”

Arin was taken aback for a moment, but he bobbed his head, acquiescing. “You’re right. You’re right.” He sat down, quietly, beside Dan again.

“ _What was that all about?_ ” Dan asked. Arin shook his head, putting a hand across his chest to his shoulder- the one that had, well… Dan hissed in a breath between his teeth. “ _Ooh, right._ ”

 

“What the FUCK took you so long??”

Julian touched down on the rooftop, followed shortly by Ding Dong- each with a white plastic toolbox tucked under an arm. “Hey, Chris. Who’s first?”

“Over here!” called Arin, raising his hand.

Chris turned his way. “Hey, what the fuck?”

“What? It’s not my fault Dan got the shit kicked out of him!”

“Arin, you whore!” Dan laughed.

“I’m, I mean, I’m good,” Matt supplied as Julian turned his way. “I think Ryan’s uh, Spawn?” (“ _Don’t call it that,”_ Ryan said, _“Eww!”_ ) “Didn’t work right?”

“DING DONG,” Chris shouted, the smirking alien asking as though he’d pass the raging human by. “I’m _actively_ bleeding over here!”

“Ethan and Suzy will be right behind us,” Ding Dong sassed, “You’ll have to wait your turn-”

“I know you just came back to life but I’m _going_ to strangle you.”

“How do you work this thing?” asked Ryan, fiddling with the latches on the box.

“I dunno, mine worked okay,” Julian replied, leaning in to prod at the crate, himself.

“Ding Dong, I thought we were a team!!”

“Hey, Chris, try this one-” Ryan offered, lifting the crate his way.

Chris rounded on him- with a burst of pure chimp strength, he slapped the box to the floor, smashing it against the rooftop and releasing a bright orange light. Chris flinched away, yelping out a pained curse as he threw his hands over his face.

 

Then the light faded, and Chris turned back to Ryan, taking in the stunned and, frankly, terrified face of the younger editor. He blinked dumbly, his vision finally clearing of the smoke that had been hanging around his head since the Reptar battle.

“Dude,” Chris said, as softly as he could muster. “M’sorry.”

Ryan cleared his throat, breaking eye contact with a shrug and a shallow laugh. “S’okay. We’re good.”

“I’m serious,” Chris insisted.

“Me too, let’s drop it!” Ryan replied, deliberately turning away.

Chris dropped it, dipping his head and turning away as well.

“This is not the scene I had hoped to arrive to,” spoke a sharp, nasally voice.

 

Suzy, Ethan, and a brown figure in a burlap sack alighted on the rooftop- Arin reared back and aimed his buster arm, but Suzy leaned between them. “Arin, be nice- this is Brown Brick!”

Brown Brick bowed, and Arin perked up. Along with Matt, the two responded with a bow of their own. “Konnichiwa, dude!”

“What were you _hoping_ to find?” asked Ding Dong, handing the rest of the med kits to Dan, Matt, and Ryan.

“A united front, one planet against the rest of the universe. Competition within the ranks will make you Easy To Kill for the Let’s Players.”

“Which you are… _nottttt?_ ” asked Dan, fiddling with the crate latches as Matt finally got his to pop open- a flash of Red light healing his scrapes and cuts.

“Alas, I once was. Insatiable for novelty, the Let’s Players demanded more than I could provide. So they took what they wanted. Ding Dong can attest to that.”

“Yes,” Ding Dong confirmed with faux enthusiasm. “We’re from the _same planet._ ”

“ _Peetah,_ ” Chris spoke up, glancing their way with a smirk. “Our _dog_ , Ding Dong-...”

Julian laughed, and Ding Dong’s wide lips quirked upward in spite of himself. “Chris.”

 

Dan finally got his crate open- a flash of shining sky blue. “Whoa! What in the-??” He hopped to his feet, looking down at them in shock and confusion. “My shoes!”

“What about them?” asked Ryan.

“They're _here!_ On my feet! I left them in the locker room back in LA, where did they come from?”

“Holy shit, you’re right!” Arin marveled, putting a hand on Dan’s shoulder to steady him as everybody squinted in confusion at Dan’s red and silver sneakers.

“Why did you leave them in the locker room?” asked Chris.

“I don’t know,” Dan mumbled, sheepish. “I thought we’d get rentals, like bowling.”

“There is so, _so_ much for you to learn,” Brown Brick asserted, retaking the floor. “And _no_ time to spare for it. If you are to save the Earth, we must take action _now_.”

“And why should we trust you?” asked Ding Dong, earning confused looks from the humans. “ _Really._ ”

 

Brown Brick paused, for the drama, presumably.

“Endling. If you feel nothing for the world we once shared, I do not hold it against you. All that I ask is you employ whatever loyalty you have for this planet you now call home against that which seeks its destruction. And to allow me, the ghost of a lost civilization, to live vicariously through your actions. Defend your home. Avenge mine. I feel our goals align, don’t you?”

Ding Dong sighed. “Somehow I don’t think that’s the whole story… But it’s enough. What’s the first step?”


	36. Reel Big Fish

“Our first step is acquiring currency. There are three methods by which one may do so- by manufacturing and selling products to the Let’s Player populace, by defeating fellow players in pitched PVP combat, or by enriching the ship environs with new assets, new games, new weapons. A double-edged sword, but it offers the most benefits.”

* * *

 “What did he mean by double-edged sword?” asked Ethan, as the nine of them entered the skyscraper Brown Brick had directed them to. The sliding doors parted, a simple, sparsely-decorated room lying beyond, and a strange, black-clad being within. Slight, then wider, then enormous- short hair, long hair, very long hair, hair done up in a bun, under a hat? No? Yes. The creature had resolved itself, becoming the spitting image of one Arin Hanson.

“ **Greetings, Newbies,** ” it spoke, sounding _like_ Arin, but with a deeper, more theatrical flair. “ **My name is BigKush, and** _ **this**_ **is the Suggestion Box.** ”

A moment’s pause, then Ding Dong spoke up, sarcasm dripping from every word. “But _how_ does it _work?_ ”

“ **I’m glad you asked,** _ **Friend,**_ ” BigKush replied with the venom of a being that had been giving the same spiel for millennia. “ **It’s simple.** ”

A pop-up appeared before each of the Earthlings, a panel of light- a simple rectangle with simple rectangles inside, buttons reading **I** and **O**.

“ **Allow us to access your minds, your memories. Every game you’ve ever played will be added to the collective consciousness, then reproduced in all their glory for other players to discover.** ”

“ _Every_ game?” a wide-eyed Ethan asked.

“ **A cursory scan of your channels and minds provided the environments you observed in the Trials, but we are considerate enough to ask your permission before delving any deeper-** ” The lookalike smirked. “ **Not that there’s much deeper to go, in your case.** ”

The real Arin turned to Dan and whispered. “ _You thinking what I’m thinking?_ ”

Dan grinned back. “ _Let’s light this copycat motherfucker up!_ ”

Dan and Arin slammed their respective I-buttons in unison, followed shortly by the rest of the ensemble- and the room _lit up_! The dim gray walls began to fill with words- _Titles_ of _Games_ \- in bright colors, and rising rapidly as more and more appeared! Until finally, everything stopped moving and a tiny, digital _~ding~_ rang out, signaling the end of the process.

“ **That’s… So many** _ **games…**_ ” BigKush looked disgusted, looking around at the newly-rainbow-emblazoned walls before honing in on his human reflection. “ **You. Do you even have a** _ **life?**_ ”

Arin grinned. “Not really!”

“ **Lord,** ” BigKush groaned, before pulling himself together and giving them all a spiteful smile. “ **Congratulations on the new high score! That is a** _ **completely**_ **unprecedented number of games- for all of you!** ”

He dropped out of the cheery character and waved a hand, dismissively, a collection of floating numbers appearing where the pop-up boxes had been. Arin raised his hand for high-fives, his respectable **7,326** ranking a good two thousand above everyone else in the room. Dan eagerly accepted the chance, energized by his own number of **2,112**. “Yeah!”

“ **Remuneration will be applied as you exit, Permissions exist in perpetuity unless revoked, revocation procedure requires Admin audience** _ **and good luck with that,**_ **you’re free to go, don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!** ”

“Hey!” Arin exclaimed, but BigKush clicked his tongue at him.

“ **Now, now. You’re the one who gave me permission to learn that. Now go** _ **play.**_ ”

 

“Guys?” asked Chris, glancing between Julian’s **872** and Ding Dong’s **2,767** to the large **0** floating in front of his own face. “I think mine’s broken.”

Ding Dong turned to him, inspecting the zero with a frown before- “Uh, Ding Dong?”- his attention was pulled to Julian, who pointed to the nearest wall. There, alongside many familiar names from their childhoods and YouTube careers alike, read ‘Tough Bippy’ and ‘Trigger Treat’.

* * *

 “The second step is ensuring each of you is in constant contact with the rest. Vendors can sell a variety of models, just spam until you find something that appropriately suits your anatomy.”

* * *

 “Well, it’s not my prescription but I think it’ll work,” Matt mused, blinking through Xertz profile creation on the glasses he’d just bought.

“Never thought we’d have the disposable income for Google Glass and Apple Watch,” Ryan chimed in, the screen on his wrist lighting up with the Xertz logo as the device projected a larger light screen above his arm. He went for the high-five, but Matt was still engaged in his glasses and got smacked.

“ _Ryan!_ This is _just like_ the commercial! _”_

“I’m sorry, dude! I didn’t know I could Friendly-Fire! Ethan, help!”

“What the hell, guys! I’m on the phone!”

* * *

 “Suzy, that’s got to be the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen,” Dan laughed, as Suzy modeled the yellow-banded choke collar around her neck, the cat-shaped tag dangling from it projecting the shimmering screen in front of her face.

“Aww, thanks Danny!” she gushed, as Arin hurried back from the vendor with a grin.

“Dan! I found the best communicators for us!”

“I’m scared to ask where that goes,” Dan pointed at the devices in Arin’s hands.

“On your face, dude! We’re like magical girls now! Game Gyaru!” He slapped his own into place- a slim gold tiara with a gleaming pink gem in the center- which immediately projected a light-screen inches from his face. He pulled it down to smile at Dan. “Come on, we’ll be like twins!”

“Alright, alright,” Dan relented, slipping the other half of the pair on to his forehead, its own sky-blue gem almost disappearing into his brown curls.

Suzy tucked them behind his ear, giving him an appraising look before turning to Arin with a smile- “You boys look amazing!” -and a kiss. “Great find, babe!”

“I wish we could all match,” Arin hummed. “That looks so good on you, though.”

“You and me still match, Arin,” she chided, taking Arin’s left hand in her own.

“Oh, hang on,” Dan deadpanned, cracking a bit as he opened a screen with his tiara. “Let me give you some privacy.”

* * *

 “Is ‘zat a bowtie?”

“I’m a japper dentleman- jap- d-dapper-”

“He’s a Japanese dentist, Chris, let him have this.”

“ _Dapper gentleman!”_

“What about you, Over Nine Thousand?”

“It’s a SCOUTER!” Ding Dong wailed. “It’s CULTURE!”

“How come aliens know about Dragon Ball Z anyway?”

“They _just read_ all of our minds, you fool! They know _everything,_ now!”

“Chris, you should try the phone we got you,” said Julian, pointing at the big beige brick Chris now had clipped to his jeans. “I think Ethan’s, uh, actually talking to somebody.”

“Oh shit, really? With who?”

* * *

 “Sorry, Dad, hang on, Matt and Ryan won’t- hey!”

“How’re you getting cell reception all the way up _here?_ ”

“Dad? You’re calling your dad?” Arin had caught on to all the screaming, drawing Suzy and Dan’s attention their way.

“Oh my god, we can call home?” asked Dan, an ecstatic grin on his face. “We can call home!”

Then Dan froze, nervously turning to Brown Brick.

“Can… We? Call home?” He asked, haltingly, hesitant.

Brown Brick seemed surprised that Dan had acknowledged them at all, but they straightened up and nodded.

“I realize that this may be your last chance to make contact with your people before our plan gets underway. I encourage this.”

“Fuck yeah!!” Dan replied, holding out his hand for a fist bump. Brown Brick stared. “Okay!!”

* * *

 “Hey, Lovelies! Sorry for the scare! Arin’s alive!”

“Hewwo _Wuvwies-_ ”

“-So it looks like Game Grumps is _back_ , baby! Wdj- _Arin!_ Pull your pants up! _Y’fuckin dumpster fire of a human being!_ _Don’t- oh my god, A-heh-heh-harin-_ ”

* * *

 “Aren’t you gonna call your parents?” asked Julian, genuinely confused as Chris stared at the brick in his hands. Now that everybody was making calls, he didn’t seem as eager to join in. “Since your old phone broke, they’re probably worried.”

Chris shook his head. “We’ve been here for hours, now, right? They’re in Ireland, it’s like, six hours ahead of us.”

“Chris,” Ding Dong chimed in. “At least leave ‘em a voicemail.”

“What if they haven’t heard about it yet? What am I gonna say? ‘ _Oh hey Mom, hey Dad, so I got abducted by aliens, you might not hear from me fer awhile._ ’ How’s that sound?”

“Chris-” Julian started.

“Nah, just. I’m gonna let ‘em sleep.” Chris sighed, setting the phone on the ground between the three of them. “Just a little bit longer. I’ll check with them in the morning.”

“Chris...” But they didn’t push it.


	37. End of Exposition

“To aid in your relations with the Let’s Players, you must now found a Guild. It will allow others to join your cause, and allow you to set a degree of rules for your engagement with them.”

“Hey, what should we call our guild?” asked Arin, who already had the menu open on his shining pink hologram projection and had invited each of them to a yet-unnamed collective.

“The Human League?” Dan perked up, outdated band name at the ready.

“Oh, sure, I didn’t want to join your dumb guild anyway,” snarked Ding Dong, and Dan sputtered.

“Wh- well shit, what’s _your_ stupid guild name?”

“Ninja Sex Party.” Ding Dong quipped.

He paused, then relented, his nublets wilting apologetically, even as Dan tried to hold a look of shock through involuntary huffs of restrained laughter.

“That... was meaner than I intended.”

“Oh!” Suzy spoke up. “Everybody, let’s all come up with names and vote on the best one!”

“Wait, wait,” said Ethan, grinning. “Let’s have some fun with it- everybody come up with a word! The best three-word combo wins!”

“I think you’re asking for trouble,” Ryan replied, but Matt cut him off.

“Boobs! My word is Boobs.”

“Okay, so we don’t have slips of paper to put in a hat, so, just message me your suggestions.”

 

Ultimately, they’d come up with “Boob Lovers Anonymous”, “Action Gamer Grumps”, and “Earth F@&&@1 Zero”.

“Yeah, I’m not saying that out loud, sorry Julian.”

 

“Okay, no offense everybody, but that was a terrible idea,” Ding Dong sighed.

“No, no, I think we got something we can work with,” Arin announced. “How about “Earth Loving Grumps”?”

“Honestly, it’s the best we got,” Julian admitted. “I threw mine away, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Chris scoffed. “You and Ding Dong are the only ones around.”

“As much as everybody jokes about it...” Ding Dong murmured, rolling his eyes.

“Alright, “Earth Loving Grumps” is a go!” Arin cheered, and with a couple more taps to his screen, a tiny grinding noise began.

“What’s that?” asked Suzy, looking around with nervous suspicion.

“It’s right in my eeear!” Ethan yelped, slapping a hand to the headphone speaker on his left.

“Wait a minute,” Chris muttered, picking up his over-sized brick of a phone and looking at the rune that was carving itself into the side. “Huh. That’s one way to show off, I guess.”

“Oh, I… Can’t see,” Julian sighed, tugging at the collar of his shirt.

“Nah, you’ve got it, too. You’ve all got it- on the uh, on all the shit we just bought.”

“That looks like a… Is that Japanese?” asked Dan, inspecting the tag on Suzy’s collar- a bit too closely. “Oh shit, sorry, Suze.”

“ _Ummm_ ,” Arin replied, essentially doing the same. Suzy giggled. “I don’t know, actually. It doesn’t look like any characters I’ve ever seen… ‘Specially not with the triangle?”

“The Japanese have _triangles,_ ” Dan laughed.

“Ka? Backwards Ka?” Arin puzzled. “Hey, Brown Brick, what _is_ that?”

“What? Your Guild icon? It’s A-L-G, your Guild name.”

“A-L-G? Earth- Ur- _Arin, did you spell Earth wrong??_ ”

“What?? No!! Look, right there! _E-A-R-T-H!_ ” Arin shouted, jamming a finger at the tiara screen he summoned, just to illustrate the spelling.

“It’s in the local writing system,” Brown Brick droned, shaking their hood in disappointment. “Created by an alien without a mouth. Mostly consonants, very unfortunate.”

“Okay, fair enough,” Arin shrugged. “So what now?”

“Now we wait.”

“For what?” asked Arin. “We’re ready to go kick some ass, right?”

“You submitted a guild, but you must wait for sponsorship from a more experienced player.”

“ _What?_ ” Ding Dong turned to Brown Brick. “Why can’t you do it?”

“I am no longer a Let’s Player. I can claim none of the perks.”

“So we’re at their _mercy_ now?” he demanded. “ _How long_ can sponsorship ta-?”

_Ping!_

“Oh shit, we’re approved!” Arin’s tiara projection showed them the Guild landing page, a simply-themed group webpage displaying nine members and a single comment, labeled in the alien language, but written in English, which Arin read aloud. “ ‘Hello bipedal babies! Welcome to your new home!’ ”

“Not if we can help it,” Chris cut in.

“ ‘I can’t wait to see all the new worlds you’ve brought us! See you soon, happy gaming!’ Z- Zeck- Zexpectrika? Is that a word?” Arin turned to Brown Brick, questioning. “Greeting, maybe?”

“No, no,” Brown Brick replied. “That is Zexpectrika, the diabolical developer behind the Spectrum class system. That they find your species adorable is perhaps the greatest stroke of luck in the universe.”

“Adorable?” Ryan asked, putting his hands on his cheeks in a cutesy pose.

“They think we’re adorable? Where’d you get that?” asked Matt, unconvinced.

“I have… _observed_ Zexpectrika. They often use such diminutives affectionately. Though it may be for the best that you do not meet them. Trust me.”

“So what now?” asked Ethan.

“Ding Dong, get us a map?”

“Oh, sure.” Ding Dong pulled out the laptop and booted it up, the poor machine starting to chug as he opened Xertz.

“On your _scouter_ , Ding Dong.”

Chris snickered as Ding Dong slowly closed the laptop again, the device on his alien friend’s face flickering to life and projecting a new screen- the nine of them, colored dots at the top of a big box, surrounded by other, semi-transparent boxes.

“Zoom out.”

That was… a good deal of boxes around them.

“More.”

They couldn’t see individual dots any longer, disappearing in favor of a singular red dot, now in a _sea_ of boxes.

“As far as you can.”

The boxes consolidated into a singular mass, becoming too small to differentiate. As Ding Dong continued to zoom out, that mass took shape. The red dot now sat on the far right curve of a massive handlebar mustache.

“You’re kidding,” Ding Dong murmured, his voice a good deal more composed than his face let on- but it caught up as he repeated himself. “You’re _kidding!_ ”

“ _Thaaat’s Fuuucked._ ” Arin’s eyes were wide, reluctantly comprehending the scene.

“Noooooo h’hoooohhhh,” Dan whined, despondent.

Inarticulate screams, cries, and requests for motherly attention rose from Matt and Ryan’s direction. Brown Brick looked between the upset parties with an air of confusion.

“What. What is wrong.”

“The fuck do you mean “ _what is wrong_ ”?” Chris replied, leaning past Ding Dong and into the projection, his scowling face almost completely encompassed by a single lobe of the mustache. “Imagine my _head_ is a planet and tell me “ _what is wrong_ ”!”

“Yes, this is a big ship. You let this intimidate you?”

“This is bigger than _any_ thing _any_ of us have _ever_ seen- _of course_ we’re intimidated!”

“But, you _game_ , do you not? Surely you have explored many worlds, more vast than your own-”

“I mean, maybe-” Julian cut in. “But video games in our world, you just sit there with a controller in your hands, you don’t _actually_ travel anywhere.”

“It is the _same thing-_ ” Brown Brick insisted. “Besides, you do not even know what I ask of you.”

“If you want us to get _anywhere_ in this bitch, it’s gunna be a big ask,” Chris grunted.

“My “Big Ask”, Oney, is for you to reach the center of this “Bitch” and destroy it. Ding Dong can plot a path.” Brown Brick turned to the rest of the group. “The rest will fight their way to the center. This is why I had you give your memories to the system- this will greatly increase the odds of you finding yourselves in familiar territory! _Yes,_ the distance is concerning, but there are shortcuts, there are vehicles! You are your planet’s greatest gamers- if you look at this as just another challenge, surely you will triumph!”

“I wouldn’t say _that_ ,” Ding Dong mumbled. Flattered as he was at being singled out, he zoomed in to the half of the mustache where they were located and started the search.

“Yeah, “greatest gamers” might be a bit much,” Arin laughed, but Dan threw an arm around his shoulders.

“Come on, Arin, own it! We’re on a giant spaceship fighting aliens and shit? We’ve got a shot at saving the world? Bro, this is how _heroes_ happen!”

“Yeah, babe!” said Suzy. “This would be the time and place for it!”

“I don’t see why not,” Matt chimed in, turning to Ryan. “I mean, we did pretty good getting here, right?”

A jarring buzzer cut through the conversation, and all eyes turned back to Ding Dong, as the projection from his scouter turned bright red. He didn’t say anything, pulling up his laptop instead and beginning to type. The surrounding humans watched quietly for a moment, confusion palpable.

“I see that my rousing speech has not expedited our departure-” Brown Brick intoned.

“Hey, this is harder than it looks,” Ding Dong grumbled, only pausing his keyboard clatter to choose words. “Looks like Let’s Players have all the time in the world to get around- I can set a waypoint, but I can’t have it plot me a route, it’s not like Google Maps.”

“But?” Chris prompted, hopeful.

“But it _could_ be,” said Ding Dong, still entrenched in the laptop. “And I think it _used_ _to_ _be_. This is gonna be janky, but if I can emulate a previous version maybe I can find our fast track. Ah-”

With a fizz, the projection flickered, and suddenly wiggly red lines started rapidly branching out across the map like lightning bolts in a novelty plasma ball, arcing and wobbling and flailing their way from the red dot towards the center of the mustache and flickering away just as quickly. Ding Dong kept typing, glancing up as the lines slowed down, eventually coming to a stop, leaving a single red beam, starting from the dot and pointing right at the center.

“That’s not right,” Ding Dong muttered.

Julian leaned over his shoulder, squinting at the laptop screen as Ding Dong continued, the line replacing itself with a wigglier one, then one with clear detours and distractions from the line. “What’s wrong?”

Ding Dong shook his head. “I’m trying to set some parameters for the route, so we’re not flying totally blind. A preference toward short levels, levels only added in the most recent patch, levels not _owned by…?_ ”

“They do work fast,” Brown Brick seemed to sigh, though it was more of an exasperated shrug, no audible breath involved. “I must warn you. PVP battles will be inevitable, and they are _different_ from fighting virtual enemies. Many have made their fortunes as PVP assassins, awarded for claiming territory for their Guild, or filling bounties set by other players. You will need your _best_ armor, your _best_ weapons. There will be no fleeing once engaged.”

“Ooh,” Ryan chewed his lip. “Sounds like Dark Souls.”

“Okay, I think I’ve found our best option.” On Ding Dong’s projection wasn’t so much a single line as it was a tight braid, with one or two loose threads fraying free before ducking back in. “This is as many Earthly levels as possible, in as straight a line as possible. There are alternate routes, too- if we start taking too long we can shift to another path without losing too much ground.”

“Take off if you get tilted, got it!” Dan cheerily cracked.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Dan,” Arin rolled his eyes, smiling regardless.

“It will be in your best interest to split up,” said Brown Brick. “Three teams of three should suffice.”

“What for?” Julian demanded. “We’ll be easier to kill off like that!”

“You humans seem stronger in numbers, but there is a limit. Teams of three offer the best odds in problem solving and survival. Each team lost one member in the trials, correct? As solo players, progress halted entirely, and in teams of two, the survivor lagged-”

“That’s because we thought they’d be _dead forever,_ you heartless potato sack!” Matt spouted.

“But now you _know better-_ ” Brown Brick cut in. “And with two survivors, that’s an extra chance to clear the level, or resurrect the fallen teammate. Beyond that, smaller groups means a smaller target. If our purposes are discovered, they won’t be able to compromise everyone at once. With two extra teams, if worse comes to worst...”

“It won’t come to _thaaat_ ,” Chris chided. “We should probably get a move-on, though, apocalypse looming n’all that sheeyit.”

“Good point.” Ding Dong folded the laptop and tucked it under his arm, looping the charge cable around his shoulder. “I’m sending you all the coordinates of the first levels and the path we’ll be taking. You should be able to see the other teams on the map. Call if you start getting off track, we don’t want to leave anybody behind.”

A chorus of electronic pings rose as everyone received the message.

And with a few brief goodbyes, fist-bumps, and promises to catch up soon, the crossover episode dispersed.


	38. Rubber Ninja, Psychic Pebbles

“Ross.”

“Brian, hey!”

It was quiet in the Grump Space. Quieter still in Ross’s office, the little yellow room devoid of his usual music as he scratched away at his tablet.

“Are you still _working?_ ” Brian accused, and Ross sighed.

“Yeah, I… Had to get away for a bit. Trying not to think about… Arin and-”

“They’re fine, you know.”

“They’re what?” Ross lowered his pen. Brian offered him his phone, small, a little outdated, but its screen proudly displaying Danny’s smiling face- and next to him… “Arin! Arin’s alive?!”

Brian started to pull the phone back, but Ross grabbed for it, hitting the play button. “ _Hey everybody-_ ” Dan’s warm voice fizzled through the tiny speakers. “ _Hewwo Wuvwies-_ ”

“Arin!” Ross cried, as if his friend could hear him. Brian was smiling.

“You could call him, you know. He’s got a brand new alien phone, it seems.”

“I shouldn’t,” Ross said, eyes still locked on the video, playing it again. “I’ll yell at ‘im.”

“Maybe he could use it. A swift kick in the pants would probably be more appropriate after the stunt he pulled, but we do what we can.”

“ _Brian,_ ” Ross closed his eyes, handing the device back. “Chris told me-”

“I know.”

“You _know?_ ”

“Of course. What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

“Um, spending time with your wife and daurter?”

“And the extended family. Ding Dong’s not the only alien who’s been living among us.”

“TWRP,” Ross muttered, and Brain nodded.

“We’re working on something. It’s been a little while since I abdicated the dual crown of Theoretical Physics and Ninjutsu, but it’s certainly been fun teaching again.”

Brian lowered his gaze to the phone. “I do regret not recruiting Ding Dong before they took off. We could have used his insight into their operation.”

“You could _call_ him-”

“Somehow I don’t think he'll appreciate that. He needs to be up there. To find closure, if nothing else.”

“Brian, I know I’m-” Ross gestured to his tablet, to the work-in-progress on the monitor there. “But if there’s anything I can do to help…”

Brian offered a rare grin, his oft-intimidating gaze showing something warm through the icy blue. “I was hoping you’d ask.”

* * *

 

“We need to do something about this,” Matt grunted, peering under every leaf and rock. “Here we are in the first level, we’ve got no weapons-”

“Speak for yourselves,” Ethan chortled, pulling the flashlight from his belt and flipping it in midair- having to grasp for it twice as he fumbled the catch. “I’ve got a flashlight.”

“A flashlight?” Ryan ribbed. “What’s that gonna- AH-” he yelped, rearing back as Ethan flashed it in his face.

“ _Ethan!_ ” Matt scolded, before sparing a glance at Ryan, which turned into a double-take. “Ryan?”

Ryan had stopped mid-recoil, arms up in front of his face, standing on one foot, the other knee hiked up to his chest.

“Pretty sweet, huh? It’ll wear off in a sec, but hey, time stop!”

Ryan yelped, stumbling back a few steps as he returned to himself. “Sh-shit! What _was_ that?!”

“What was what?” asked Ethan, balancing the flashlight on its end on his palm.

“It stops ti-” Matt started as Ethan lost control of the balancing act, dropping the light into his hand and hitting the switch again- this time Matt was caught in the beam.

“Matt?!” Ryan cried, waving his hand in front of his co-host’s face.

“Chill, it wears off,” Ethan mused, clipping the offending light source back to his belt.

“-ime-- _Aw, jeez!_ ” Matt lifted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “That shit’s bright.”

“We need to be more careful,” said Ryan, pale and sweaty, looking up into the canopy above them.

“What game are we even _in?_ ” Ethan asked. “Far Cry? Uncharted? Just Cause? Tomb Raider?”

“AAAH!!” Matt shrieked, leaping behind Ryan. “ _SNAKE!_ ”

“Where?” Ryan demanded, following Matt’s shaking finger to a green shape along one of the vines dangling across the branches off the path they were following. Ryan brightened, reaching out a hand toward the wriggling creature. “Hey you,” he greeted, as if he were speaking to his own dog. “Yeah, you, c’mere!”

The tree boa periscoped, lifting its head from the branch and flicking its tongue curiously in Ryan’s direction. It slithered to his outstretched arm, its vibrant green dimming to a deep navy blue as it clambered up to his shoulder. Matt screamed again, tripping over his own feet to get away as Ethan leaned in with an intrigued coo.

“See, Matt? It’s just like the Pikmin, they just- Matt?”

“Is it cool? Is that thing really gonna help us?”

“Yeah, of course! For now, anyway. I don’t know if they can come with us, though. Out of the jungle.”

“Ohh, like the Pikmin,” Matt mumbled.

“What happened with the Pikmin?” Ethan asked. Matt looked at Ryan, who looked down at his shoes. The snake wound itself around his hat, its tail coiling in his hair.

“I mean,” Ryan started. “It’ll happen soon enough, right?”

“What? _No!_ What are you talking about?” Matt stuttered, putting a hand on Ryan’s shoulder- clammy, even through his new shirt. “We’ll figure this out, okay? It’s just a glitch!”

“Yeah,” Ryan didn’t sound convinced. “Just a glitch.”

* * *

 

“Arin, slow down!”

“What? What’s up?” Arin asked, ducking back into the alcove where Dan and Suzy huddled. Suzy’s collar was projecting a map, her yellow dot seemingly alone in a bubble of boxes.

“We got way ahead of everybody,” she sighed, sounding disappointed. “We should probably slow down- so nobody gets lost, y’know?”

“What, just cuz we’re the _most epic_ gamers Earth has to offer we gotta slow down for everybody else?”

“Uh, _yah_ ,” Dan sassed, “That’s called _teamwork_!”

Arin groaned for eleven seconds.

“Seriously though,” said Dan, once he was sure Arin was done. “I feel like we’re missing stuff. Maybe we should explore a little before killing this colossus?”

Arin frowned, leaning back out of the hole into the misty mire beyond, dust drifting down from the ceiling of the tunnel in time with the thudding steps of the moss-coated beast behind them.

“We already woke her up, though,” Arin whined, but he relented. “Suzy, you and me can keep it distracted. Dan, do you think you can find _anything_ out there?”

“I’ll let’cha know if I do!” Danny replied, looking both ways before leaping out of the grave and off into the field, disappearing into the cloud.

Arin’s jaw tightened, looking up to Phaedra again as she approached their opening from above. He and Suzy turned, about to jog down the path to the other end of the tunnel when her projected map shimmered, turning to Dan’s cheery mug.

“Oh Scoo-zie~!” He sang, “I found’ja somethiiing!”

* * *

“It’s purple, so it’s yours, right Julian?”

Julian frowned, his hand passing right through the transparent purple shape. “What am I doin’ wrong?”

Ding Dong hummed, opening Xertz on his scouter. “ _Can’t… Pick… Up… Item,_ ” he searched. “No, it’s the right color. Oh! Have you tried unequipping your back and arm slots?”

“Un- unequip my-?” Julian started, turning to look over his shoulder at the purple wings tucked there. “But they’re _attached_ , aren’t they?”

Chris shrugged. “Why would they be attached? Unless they’re some gross alien parasite that’s suckin’ your guts out through yer back-”

“I read a comic about that one, actually- Junji Ito, I think?”

“Well ya gotta take ‘em off before they _Junji Eat-you!_ ”

“How do I ‘unequip wings’ though-?” Julian asked- but no sooner had he uttered the words than did his entire loadout disappear- a single purple flicker as both his wings and arm lizard faded away. Julian shivered, reaching behind his back with his newly freed hand before wrapping his arms around himself. “I feel so naked!”

Chris and Ding Dong both laughed. “Julian, put on the new one!” Ding Dong cheered, and Julian reached for the purple bag.

A shower of sparks climbed his arm, planting itself on his back- a tube stretching to a weapon in his hand. “A… Vacuum cleaner?” Chris muttered, squinting at the machine now strapped to Julian’s back.

“It’s _Luigi’s Mansion_ , Chris,” Ding Dong explained, waving a hand toward the upper balcony of the foyer they were in.

“Hell yeah, it’s the uh, Poltergust Three Thousand?”

“Yeah, that was it,” Ding Dong agreed. “I wonder if they’ll let us keep the pearls and stuff, when you suck up the ghosts.”

“I dunno,” Julian replied, flicking it on for a second… Sure enough, a deafening roar kicked up, the tube in Julian’s hand pulling in a cyclone of dust from every surface!

“Oh fuck-!” Chris yelped, but Julian quickly shut it off before it could suck anything in. Chris adjusted his hat and Ding Dong adjusted his face, the force of the vacuum having pulled everything to one side on the both of them.

“Okay! Note to self! Strong vacuum!” Julian yelped, tucking the handle behind his back and clipping it to the base.

“Man, I wish I could have all my cool stuff back,” Chris sighed.

Ding Dong turned his way with a raised eyebrow. “Equip sword?”

“Uh, ‘equip sword’?” Chris imitated- and an orange flash brought the little glow-in-the-dark dagger back to his side. “Oh shit! Nice! ‘Equip keyblade’!”

Nothing happened.

“Aw.”

“Chris, I don’t think you ever took it off. The keychain’s still there.”

“Where?” asked Chris, turning in place, the chain dangling from his belt loop swinging just out of sight behind him. Julian laughed, Ding Dong grinned.

“ _Behind_ you, you idiot!”

“ _Oh, there t’is,_ ” Chris burbled in a goofy, high-pitched voice, swinging it just right to catch it in his hand.

“Come on,” Ding Dong smirked. “The Grumps are just ahead of us, let’s give ‘em something to grump about.”

* * *

 

“Joshua Tomar, I _know_ you’re the last person he talked to, so _spill!_ ”

“Dude, he’s probably _dead_!” Tomar frowned into the camera. This Skype call had been six minutes of accusations so far and Josh didn’t know what else to say. “That space-stache landed right on his apartment building! He got Wicked Witch of the Wasted or some shit.”

“Fuckin’ Debbie Downer, fuckin’ pessimist-” Zach’s voice hissed through his headphones. “You gonna give up on him that easy?”

“Zach. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“He’s _fine_ , I _know_ he is, I bet he’s-”

“Believing isn’t gonna un-Nine-Eleven somebody, Zach.”

“Well what the fuck am I _supposed_ to do? I sleep in one day and suddenly I wake up in a world where aliens are _real_ and Chris O’Neill _isn’t?!_ ”

Josh had to look at the camera, since Zach’s video wasn’t coming through. “Zach, I’m sorry.”

“ _M’be I just shouldn’t have woke up today._ ”

“Zach, don’t. Don’t do anything s-”

“I’m not _stupid_ , Tomar! I just- I just- I just-”

“I know.”

“I just didn’t want to believe he could fuckin’… _die?_ ” Zach’s phlegmatic voice was thicker than usual. “ _I’m a grown-ass man, I shouldn’t be-_ ”

“You can, though.” Tomar had leaned back, the seam between the wall and ceiling in his room becoming a welcome distraction. “Nobody would blame you, he was your-”

Zach had hung up. Tomar rubbed his watery eyes and hoped he hadn’t crossed a line.

No- this was _Zach,_ of course he hadn’t.

Of course he hadn’t.


	39. Nothing

Arin should have given Dan more credit. Already the man was climbing things, squeezing through narrow passages, digging around in the underbrush, and finding all kinds of cool shit. He’d gotten Suzy a cool sword and cape (the “Wander3r” loadout), and a new Mega-Buster mod for Arin, the Boomerang Cutter.

“What’s gotten into you?” Arin smiled, watching Dan glide between trees like a flying squirrel. He and Suzy trotted along the wooded path below him, occasionally collecting bits of bit-crushed treasure that fell out of the trees Dan rustled. The singer landed on a blocky branch and swung upside-down to face his younger friend.

“What, you guys don’t feel it?” he asked, “It’s like there’s basically no gravity up here- like, fuck you Issac Newton!”

Arin laughed, and Dan grinned down at them, as if the Cheshire cat was 6’2” and had a Jew-fro.

“Aw, It’s good to have you guys back!”

“Have us back?” asked Suzy, though she and Arin seemed to recognize it at the same time.

“Shit,” said Arin, running a hand through the bleached bangs that had fallen loose from the bun at the back of his head. “We need to talk about that. Did you want to talk about that?”

“Why?” Dan deflected, dropping from the branch to land on his feet. “It’s fine! _You’re_ fine, we’re _fiiine_.”

“Dan-” Arin started, looking to Suzy for support. She shrugged, and Dan turned, skipping down the path ahead with his usual stage prance- a gait that, even in normal gravity, always surprised Arin with its speed. He’d have to break into a sprint to catch up. “Dan!”

“Arin!” Suzy yelped, jogging behind.

* * *

 

“Oh sweet!”

“That is,” Matt stuttered, lightly bouncing the weapon in his hands, hefting it up to his shoulder. “That is a rocket launcher.”

“Hell yeah, we finally got some decent firepower!” Ryan cheered.

“Seems kind of uh, overkill though,” hummed Matt, looking over the boxy, gray design of it. Simple, but still obvious.

“Yeah, I want a gun!” Ethan said, bright-eyed. Matt and Ryan looked at each other.

“Yeah, sure thing Skater Boy,” Ryan laughed, but Ethan frowned.

“I’m serious! Right now we’ve got two boomies and a _flashlight_. And a danger noodle. We don’t have anything that can quickly and safely _stop_ an enemy-”

“Safely, yeah,” said Matt.

“-At close range without, like, blowing ourselves to Kingdom Come! If we had a shooty or a stabby, then maybe we’d stand a chance...”

Ethan looked between the two older boys.

“Matt, how did you finish the trials alone? With _just Molotovs_?”

Matt abruptly coughed into his fist. “Whaaaat? That- It wasn't a big deal, it was _nothing-_ ”

“No, Matt, how _did_ you beat the trials?” Ryan asked, leaning Matt’s way as the other twenty-something avoided eye contact. “I’ve been meaning to ask since that announcer said you did. You know, congratulate you and all that?”

“Ryan, this is not- this is not a good time.”

“What? It’s just us and Ethan. Out in the middle of nowhere. Not an enemy in sight-”

“Oh fuck,” Ethan cursed, looking around. “That might be a problem. Actually, when’s the last time you guys saw- _AAH!_ ”

Ethan fell forward- his arms bound to his sides by a thick rope- heavy orbs attached to either end dragging him off-balance into Ryan. Like a deer, Matt took advantage of the confusion, turned tail, and loped into the undergrowth, leaving Ryan to stumble after him, tripping on his own feet and dragging Ethan along with- his panicked babble underscoring the sharp zings and whistles of projectiles firing through the brush nearby.

* * *

 

“Hello!” Dan greeted. The two creatures he addressed perked up from their idle chatter at the cubical campfire. They jumped to their feet- plantigrade, but with far more leg joints than efficiency would dictate, armored in metallic exoskeletons, oblong helmets turning his way to reveal reptilian faces within. Dan winced, regretting his decision to speak to them, or at least try. One of them waved a red-hued limb in his direction, its smaller companion in yellow dashed forward, a pixel-rough shovel in its claws. “Oh, shit!”

This was the scene as Arin and Suzy stumbled upon it- Dan dodging a shovel, wielded by a lizard as another creature flung frisbees their way. Suzy took a step forward, but Arin blocked her with an arm.

“Wait!” A frisbee plopped into the dirt in front of them, a yellow disc punctuated with a single red light in the center- “It’s a _mine_!”

“Danny!” Suzy cried as Dan stepped back, one tennis shoe landing on a hazardous disc. She screamed, and Arin grabbed her in a bear hug, keeping her from rushing in.

“What?”

There was an explosion, but it wasn’t nearly as horrifying as Suzy and Arin expected. Dan was intact- in fact, he turned their way and glanced down with a confused look on his face, allowing the other lizard to get in a few swings with the shovel. Swings that seemed to pass harmlessly through him, as if he were a hologram.

Arin charged his blaster and fired a couple of rounds at the yellow-clad creature- it dodged one and took the other, to no effect, before dashing back towards the brute in red. “Danny, are you okay?” he asked, still keeping his distance, wary of the mines as Suzy hopped toward the lizards, blade drawn.

“Well, that shovel guy was no smooth criminal,” Dan replied, stepping over a mine in Arin’s direction. “I don’t think he hit me!”

“Are you sure?” Arin asked, still worried, “It went right through you! And the _mines_?”

“Nothing! Maybe they want to be friends!”

* * *

 

“I don’t think they want to be friends!” Ryan yelped, dragging Ethan through the bushes, away from the path. His heartbeat rang in his ears as he stumbled over roots and fronds, tropical plants he’d seen in passing in exotic stores in Little Tokyo. Ethan yelled, whether or not he could see anything through the shoulder-high undergrowth it spurred Ryan to look upward, to care less about the crap he could trip on and more about the trees he could be running into- and sure enough he could see the trunks ahead thinning, a glimpse of open virtual sky ahead. He slowed, the promise of safety causing his adrenaline to bottom out- just in time to see the cliff.

Ryan gasped, throwing his free arm out to catch the rough trunk of the nearest palm, stopping both of their momentum before they could pitch over the edge. He hissed, his arm coated in shallow scrapes- Ethan leaned past him and looked down into the abyss, the bottomless pit below. “Where’s Matt?”

* * *

 

Suzy nearly lost her balance as her sword slipped harmlessly through the lizard’s form, the creature twisting her way with its own blade and nicking her arm- and that’s when she saw it. The tiny yellow print rising from the point of contact.

**“40”**

Wide-eyed, she fell away, turning to Arin and Dan on the other side, the two of them walking towards each other through the minefield, mid-conversation.

“ _Danny! Stop!_ ”

Danny didn’t stop, finishing his step as he glanced over his shoulder her way, a mildly confused look on his face before he disappeared in a flash of smoke, shrapnel, and sky blue light.

Suzy’s heart sank at Arin’s dismayed, slack-jawed expression, his eyes darting about the space most previously occupied by his longtime cohost. Suzy caught the yellow lizard’s shovel in the crossguard of her sword, the red pulling out a black sphere from behind its back. She wanted to warn him, but Arin’s expression told her he wasn’t about to hear her- she had to wince at the _sound_ that he made.

* * *

 

Ryan didn’t have an answer, his dizzy mind too drained and oxygen-deprived to rationalize one. He turned right and started to run, hugging the treeline along the narrow cliff’s edge.

“Where did he go? He was straight ahead of us!” Ethan only had to focus on keeping up and not tripping, but Ryan was trying to _navigate_ , thinking about where the level had started, where the goal might be, how to get back into the jungle without running into- “What the fuck are _those?!_ ”

Ryan made the mistake of looking over his shoulder and trying to comprehend the creatures chasing them, wasting valuable brainpower that would have been better used watching where he was going. The arm holding Ethan’s restraints pulled toward the trees for a moment too long, leaning his shoulder into a thick branch.

Ryan let go of Ethan, retracting his arm in pain, watching Ethan struggle to stay upright on the cliff’s edge- far, far above him.

* * *

 

Arin sounded like agony itself was being torn from his lungs, rising from sorrow to rage in tune with the rising tone of his buster as it charged to maximum.

Suzy grit her teeth, throwing the lizard’s shovel out of its grip and swinging her sword through its neck, the lack of resistance catching her off guard once again, the weight of her sword throwing her off-balance, two too many steps to the left bringing her into the mine zone, and then…

Nothing.


	40. Tee Pee Kay

Suzy came to with a gasp, almost falling out of the beam she’d been suspended in, the yellow light releasing her into the cool gray break room. This time, though, there were three other figures there to greet her.

“Suzy!” Dan and Arin called in unison, separating from the relieved hug they’d been sharing to rush to her assistance, helping her down from the podium as if she were a princess, Arin pulling her into a hug of their own.

“Suzy, are you alright?”

“What happened out there?”

“I- they did _damage_ , but we couldn’t _feel_ it!”

“I _told_ you PVP would be different.”

“Brown Brick?” Suzy perked up, turning to the hooded being. They were against a wall, the one wall absent of an illuminated podium. “What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” they replied. “You weren’t supposed to TPK until _much_ later!”

“Supposed to _what?_ ” Dan asked, incredulous.

“T-P-K. Total-Party-Kill. This room is in the Meta until a team TPKs. I expected it to arrive much nearer the center, but...”

Arin huffed, crossing his arms. Dan scratched his head, ruffling his thick curls. Suzy scuffed her shoe against the smooth floor.

“I cannot fault you for being taken by surprise,” enunciated Brown Brick. “After so long with the best weapons and the best armor, they no longer feel pain or fear. They jump on the newest levels in an effort to feel that rush again.”

“ _How are we supposed to fight something that doesn’t feel pain or fear?!_ ” Dan cried. “This is some fuckin’ Terminator shit!”

“You _Do. More. Damage._ ” Brown Brick emphasized. “Dispatching them is still your best way to the next level inwards. Your best way to turning the tide against the Let’s Players.”

“Okay, we- We know what we’re up against now,” Arin figured, scratching his beard. “Just don’t get _hit,_ I guess?”

“How do we know we’ve been hit if we can’t _feel_ it?” Dan asked, looking to Brown Brick past Arin and Suzy’s unsure expressions.

“How do games on _your_ planet tell you you’ve been hit?”

* * *

 

“Matt!” said Ryan.

“Ryan! Ethan!” said Matt.

“Ethan!” said Ethan.

“Ethan.” said Ryan.

“What happened to you?”

“I ran right off a cliff. Like a chicken with its head cut off,” Matt sighed. “You?”

“Ryan dragged me into a pit-”

“That is _blatantly untrue-_ ”

“I believe it,” Matt joked, laughing at the glare he earned from Ryan. “What the hell was chasing us?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan explained. “I got a look at them, but I just...”

“They were goo people.” Ethan stated, nonchalant.

“ _What?_ ” Matt asked, his face twisting in preemptive disgust.

“Yeah. Goo people.” Ethan shrugged. “Like, big globs of jelly flopping around in the trees.”

“That’s _Nasty,_ ” declared Ryan, as firmly as he could.

“We have to go back there, though,” Matt groaned. “We gotta beat the level.”

“You’re right,” Ryan sighed.

“Well, we could do what Ding Dong said and pick another one on the path,” Ethan suggested, but Ryan shook his head.

“I wanna give it one more shot.”

“Yeah! Let’s give those slimes a piece of our minds!”

“Hey, nice!” Ryan and Matt high-fived.

Ethan frowned, but he nodded. “Alright, let’s go!”

* * *

 

A wooded dirt road, a campsite, two lizards, and a goddamn minefield. Arin took potshots at them as Suzy waited for either one to venture out of the mines. Danny honestly didn’t have much to do but stand by and watch, and, of course, backseat drive.

“Do you think you could destroy the mines with your arm gun? Would it still uh, damage you if your sword hit ‘em? Oh! Arin, if you kill the big guy, will the bombs disappear?”

“ _We get it, Dan! Thank you!_ ” Arin growled, and Dan threw his hands up, inoffensively.

“Sorry! Just tryin’ to help!”

Suzy frowned. Maybe they could risk it on one, but if she died, well, Dan still had no weapons.

Gingerly, she tapped the tip of her sword against the nearest mine. Boom! A plume of smoke and dust shot upward, and Suzy flinched away, reflexively shutting her eyes. “Damn it!” She couldn’t tell if she’d been hit or not.

“ _Ar_ -in!” Dan called as Suzy stumbled back. “ _Shoot_ ‘em!”

“ _OKAY!_ ” grunted Arin, loosing bolt after bolt into the ground ahead, each one setting off a geyser of dirt. “You _happy?!_ ”

“Wdjh- _ME?!_ ” Dan yelled back- “You could make a _path_ for _Suzy-_ ”

“Well you should have _said_ something! I’m not a _mind reader-!_ ”

Suzy shrieked- out of the cloud of falling dirt rolled a large black orb, shooting sparks out of a hole in the top.

 

“That was quick,” said Brown Brick, looking to each of them, Arin and Dan standing on opposite sides of the room now, arms crossed. Suzy turned to Brown Brick with a disappointed shake of the head.

“Do you guys wanna try again?” she asked, trying to stay perky in spite of the mood.

“Uh, NO!” said Arin, throwing an arm wide in Dan’s direction. “I can’t hear myself think like this!”

“It never bothered you _before,_ ” Dan replied, hand over his heart. “You insult my art!”

“Maybe that’s why I’m so _bad at games!_ ” Arin howled, boiling over. “Your _stupid voice_ is always in my ear and I can’t concentrate!”

“Well! Maybe!” Dan was shaking. “You shouldn’t have hired me to _do a show_ if you didn’t want me to DO A SHOW!”

“ _DANNY!_ ” Suzy scolded. “ _ARIN!_ What’s gotten into you two?! We have to work together if we’re gonna beat them!”

“But _Suzy,_ ” Arin started, dejected.

She responded with a stern look, and Arin pouted. Dan looked away, off into the far corner of the room.

“There is a solution,” Brown Brick spoke up. “If cooperation is off the table.”

* * *

 

Matt shivered, averting his eyes as Ryan dry-heaved in the opposite corner, trying his best not to join him. Ethan patted Ryan on the back, murmuring nonsense rather than comfort.

“Thanks,” Ryan gasped, belching. “Thanks, B _ **ooaargh-**_ ddy.”

Matt swallowed, shaking hands combing through his short hair. “At least we fought, this time!” he reassured himself, but Ryan threw a rueful look his way.

“ _You_ fought, maybe.”

That was true. They’d loaded in, ready to face whatever the Let’s Players had for them, when the same tool that had bound Ethan before caught Ryan in the neck, killing him _instantly_ and leading to his current nauseated state. The gelatinous beings, partially contained in yellow tubes of metal (armor, presumably) were able to fire projectiles out of their semi-solid biomass at speeds akin to a proficient human baseball player, undulating along at a frightening pace. And a rocket to the face did nothing- absolutely nothing- to slow them down.

In a panic, Matt had laid down row after row of molotovs, fire spreading from the narrow path below up to the trees bending over the road, trees that their goopy opponents leapt into, disappearing from sight. Between the shadows cast by the fire and the things still being flung his way from creatures he couldn’t see, Matt was again consumed by instinct and bolted in the opposite direction, leaving Ethan behind who-knows-where.

“What happened, anyways?”

“I ran off another cliff,” Mat admitted.

“I got eated,” said Ethan.

“ _Seriously?!_ ” asked Ryan; concern, dismay, and unexpected humor combining into an enthusiastic-sounding squeal.

“Nooo, but how gross would that be?”

Matt laughed as Ryan slumped in visible disappointment.

“I don’t know, actually. I ran into a tree and passed out.”

“That probably counts!” Matt offered. “You didn’t see it, so it could’ve been anything-”

“Y’know what, fuck this! Let’s pick a different level.”

“Yeah, Ryan,” Matt sighed. “Let’s take our ball and go.”


	41. The Old Switcheroo

“ _Hey Chris!_ ”

“Whoa, it’s Arin- hey Arin.”

“Oh my god, _right now?_ ” asked Ding Dong, offering Julian a hand-up from the fossil they’d been climbing, right as it crumbled beneath his feet.

“Oh fuck,” Julian breathed, grasping Ding Dong’s shirt. They were on stable ground for now, but…

“Tell ‘im we can’t talk!”

“ _Shit, is this a bad time?_ ”

“Naw dude, just playing some Fart of Darkness, gotta be careful on the timing, you know how it is.”

“ _Well uh, this is gonna be a weird request but like, we need a substitution._ ”

“Huh?”

“For what? What happened?” Ding Dong demanded, suddenly curious.

“ _We ran into some other players and uhhhh, we got owned!_ ” Arin winced, a pained grin on his face, not that Chris could see it, holding the phone to his ear as he was, the screen being projected behind his head. “ _So if we could uh, trade out a teammate for one of you guys…?_ ”

“Which one?” Ding Dong squinted in suspicion.

“I want Danny.” Julian requested, and Ding Dong turned to squint his way.

“ _So, Dan for Chris?_ ” asked Arin, suddenly chipper.

Chris looked to Ding Dong and Julian as the two turned away, Julian’s vacuum at the ready. “You guys don’t mind, right? I mean it shouldn’t be too long-”

“Go already!” said Julian, emphatically waving Chris off as a crowd of black creatures poured out of a nearby crag, their high-pitched scrabbling and gibbering drowned out by Julian’s vacuum cleaner.

“Yeah, man, I’ll be right-”

 

Dan stumbled out on to the cliff side, grasping a handhold before he could lose his balance. Oh, they were high up- above a bottomless red-dirt canyon. Ding Dong and Julian were just ahead, dragging monster after monster into the little purple hoover on Julian’s back.

“Oh, hey!” Julian greeted, glancing over his shoulder. Dan waved back, stepping nervously closer along the ledge. “You ever play Heart of Darkness?”

Dan laughed. “You don’t watch Game Grumps either, huh?”

* * *

 

“-there-?” Chris found himself looking skyward at pixellated pine trees until Arin cleared his throat. “Oh, wha’sup?”

“We need your help with these aliens,” Arin sighed, turning and leading the way down the path. Suzy and Chris fell into step behind him, Suzy whispering his way.

“ _Danny_ _never found any weapons so we all died twice._ ”

“Ah,” Chris replied, summoning the keyblade. “So what are they?”

“Lizards, I think? One of ‘em threw a bunch of mines everywhere and the other has a shovel.”

“I can see that,” Chris hummed as they arrived, the minefield around the campsite having received another layer of reinforcement. The lizards didn’t even bother to stand up, the one in red simply pulling a large black orb from its belt, silently facing their way. “Is he _threatening_ us?”

“That thing’s what killed us last time,” Arin interjected, “So I’d say yeah!”

“You guys got a plan?” Chris asked, and Suzy drew her sword, frowning.

“Um,” Arin offered, pointing his blaster at the aliens. “Get the big guy first?”

“ **YOU PINK THINGS ARE SO** _ **LOUD!**_ ” roared the alien in red, hauling itself to its feet and hoisting the bomb in its hands into the air- arcing it their way.

“Get down!” Arin shouted, raising his blaster to intercept the sphere.

Chris shoved him aside, swinging the keyblade in a sharp arc- the rounded side of the post smacking hard against the bomb, sending it back airborne, its new copper coating sparkling in the artificial sun.

“What the fuck, Chris!” Arin shouted, finding his footing and narrowly avoiding a mine in the process. “You tryin’ to kill me?!”

“Are ya gonna _shoot him_ or what?!” Chris demanded- Arin grit his teeth and complied.

The red lizard looked up, twisting its neck at odd angles, seemingly unable to comprehend the shining sphere coming its way. As it raised its claws skyward to catch the bomb, Arin’s blaster shots slipped through its armor and it lost its concentration- dropping its eye level just in time for the bomb to _CLANK_ off its helmet and fall to the ground between its feet. Its yellow friend had wised up, taking off through the minefield toward the human interlopers, shovel at the ready.

The red lizard reached down for the explosive as it finally did what it did best- erasing the big guy from the game in a flash of red and a cloud of smoke, the shockwave setting off every last one of the mines, the blasts kicking up fountains of dirt, radiating outwards from the campsite- catching the smaller lizard in the spray- the sound of its footsteps vanishing into the last of the booms and the gentle patter of raining soil clods.

“Holy shit!” Arin laughed. “Chris, you did it!”

“Oh my god!” Suzy cheered, lowering her sword and patting Chris on the shoulder. “How did you think of that? That was crazy!”

Chris shrugged, the keyblade disappearing in a shimmer. “S’not that big a deal,” he modestly admitted, a shy smile tugging at his cheeks. “Oh shit!!”

A rasping snarl was the prompt herald of the ambush- the yellow lizard leaping out of the collapsing dust cloud and brandishing its shovel right at Chris!

Chris grabbed for his shortsword and staggered backwards, swinging once- twice- cutting right through the armored alien to no effect-! In a panic, he cocked his arm back and threw a punch- _**CRACK!**_

 

The shovel dropped to the ground, and the creature stumbled back, claws covering its face. It whipped its helmet off, revealing its reptilian face, its snout mangled by the hit. It turned to the side, pouring a mouthful of thick moss-green sludge on to Arin’s pants before falling to its butt on the dirt path and flickering away into yellow light.

“Oh, eww!!” Arin yelled before the gunge disappeared as well. “Huh?”

“I… I think we actually won?” Suzy spoke up, unsure, looking over her shoulder toward the empty campsite (which was more or less just a crater by this point). “They’re both gone.”

Chris shook his hand out, frowning at the floor where the creature had just landed. “So uh, my _thing_ didn’t thing. ‘Zat normal?”


	42. Royale

“This looks nice.” Ryan looked around the simply-styled seaside cityscape around him, little red-brick buildings, a sandy strip of shoreline. “What game d’you think this is, Matt? ...Matt?”

Ryan looked to his left, the person next to him looking back- it wasn’t Matt. He jumped back, looking at the mirror image standing there before him, at the blank expression on the Other Ryan’s face. And the face of the Other-other Ryan next to him. And the one next to _him_.

“Oh, gottie!” Ethan laughed, elbowing a still-shocked Ryan. “I found a pistol!”

“Uh, Ethan, doesn’t something seem weird to you?”

Ethan looked at him with his eyebrows raised, spinning the weapon one-handed and immediately dropping it, firing one giant white orb off into the air with a _BANG_. “AAH! Uh, I dunno, I’ve never seen this game before. What is it?”

“ _RYAN_ _!_ _-_ _ryan-an..._ _RYAN?!-_ _ryan-an..._ ” Matt’s voice was distant, echoing across the playing field, from the other side of the small brick building nearby. Ethan picked the pistol back up, looking up to the fake sky, a bright blue, no clouds, no wind.

“Shit,” Ryan grunted, calling Matt on his watch. “Matt?”

“ _Ryan! This is freaking me out, man, there’s all these- Whoa, whoa, what are you-?_ ”

Ryan looked up from the call, the other Ryans around him starting to wander off, away from the shore and into the city, picking up weapons from the ground on their way- shotguns, pipes, and uzis. The clatter of collected ammunition filled the area, along with the footsteps of the Ryan army.

“ _Ryan! They all look like us!_ ”

“I know,” Ryan replied, trying to pick up a pipe and having it slip through his fingers. “Shit. Just hang back, let them kill each other-”

“ _But the play area’s gonna close in! How am I gonna know if it’s you?_ ”

“Oh! So it’s like Fortnite?” asked Ethan, “Like a _tiny_ Fortnite? Who’s our opponents?”

Ryan gulped, trying a shotgun. No dice. “Matt. Like an army of Matts.”

“Well _that’s_ gonna not- not got- gonna be too hard then, right? Uh, no offense, Matt.”

“ _I’m more offended by that sentence. You guys stay back too, though, at least one of us has to_ _live_ _through this_ _!_ ”

Already the gunfire was picking up- Ryan managed to grab a pistol, same as Ethan, but as the army of Ryans took off around one side of the building, a couple of Matts arrived- coming out of the bushes on the other side. Ethan seemed to have forgotten himself, looking their way with a blasé smile and a goofy voice.

“Oh, hi, Matt.”

The Matts each raised a shotgun and Ethan bolted, not even sticking around for a warning shot. Ryan fired the pistol at them, but didn’t aim- running the opposite way around the building instead. He crashed into the back of the advancing Ryan line, losing his hat as he collided with another Ryan- and on the other side of that Ryan was _absolute_ _carnage._

The Let’s Players were not pulling their punches. Matts and Ryans lay strewn about the field beyond, in pools of their own materials, alone, on top of each other, limp and lifeless and empty. The gruesome visage they’d been spared before was now on extensive display, and Ryan felt sick.

All of the Matts looked like Matt.

 

Ryan shoved away from the Other Ryan, leaving his hat behind- but ahead he could already see what looked like a bright red sandstorm advancing over the beach. “Fuck! The storm!”

“ _Ryan, the play area’s closing already! I have to move!_ ”

“Matt, I’m-” Ryan got an idea, just as one of the Matts from before got enough brainpower to circle the building and come their way. “Matt, I’m gonna be the Ryan who’s naked! Don’t trust any other Ryan, okay?”

“ _You’re crazy!”_ But Matt was smiling. _“Of all the times to-!_ ”

“There’s no time. I’ll come find you.”

 

Ryan was already tugging his shirt off over his shoulders, kicking off his shoes and shorts, running along the stretch of road northward, over a sand dune into something that could well have been a nice neighborhood, if it hadn’t been created to serve an infinite turf war between two friends who happened to run a Youtube channel together. The road ended, and a hard left turn took him down an alleyway to a turnaround where a few red-shirted figures stood.

There was Matt- wait, no there wasn’t. There were Matts, plural, stragglers from the main herd, and Matt wasn’t among them- no glasses, no expressions.

“Where’d you go?” he asked the real Matt, edging south as the advancing storm began to swallow up the idle clones behind him.

“ _The storm, Ryan! I’m in the center now!_ _Get over here_ _!_ ”

“How many are left?” he asked, wondering if the line he’d left behind was still alive or if they’d fallen like the rest. South-southeast now, into a tree-lined park, a field of flowers.

“ _I don’t know, I think- that’s not you, is it? Oh fuck-!_ ”

“Matt, I told you I’d be the _naked_ one! Fuck!”

“I didn’t know you were being serious!”

He could hear Matt in real life now, could see him in the white circle ahead, could see the Other Ryan advancing on him, pipe in hand.

“ _Punch_ him!” Ryan shouted, and Matt turned his way, doing a double-take at his exposed, well, _everything_. “You can punch, remember!?”

Matt ducked a swing of the pipe and kicked out at the Ryan, who took one hit to the gut before falling over. Matt panted, looking out over the field again as the real-Ryan and the storm kept closing in.

“Guess he was low on health,” Matt chuckled humorlessly as Ryan jogged up- entering the narrow circle just as the storm caught up to them. “Man, that bruise is looking nasty. You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s no big-” Ryan shrugged, looking out at the storm. “Oh shit, Ethan! _Ethan!_ ” he called, the younger man currently making a mad dash their way- …Oh.

Surrounded by the red mist, Ethan stopped, falling to one knee, then to the ground. Then he was gone entirely.

 

“Is it… just us now?”

“Matt, I think one of us has to win.”

“I could, I could walk out there, I guess? Ethan didn’t make it look too bad.”

“Matt.” Ryan didn’t have to imagine what it would look like for Matt to walk out there. Just two feet outside the ring was a Matt sprawled face-down on the grass. Then there was the Ryan that Matt had just dispatched, pipe still clenched in its fist.

“Ryan? Ryan, wait-”

Ryan stepped into the mist, glancing over his shoulder at Matt as he did.

He couldn’t think of anything to say.

 

Matt reached for him, but in a blink his hand was floating in a sea of yellow, the words **MATT WINS** wiggling where Ryan had stood.


	43. Instant Regret

“Ow, ow, oww,” Julian grunted, landing awkwardly on his ankle. The swampy caverns full of glowing mushrooms and purple-mouthed venus flytraps they’d discovered was a welcome reprieve from the narrow flooded tunnel they’d just left behind. Even so, Dan was still wringing nasty water out of his cape and Julian’s damp clothes made it hard from him to hang on to all the walls they were having to climb now, slipping off of handholds and trying not to fall in the leech-water below.

“You okay, dude?” asked Dan, steadying him with a moist touch.

“I am _now,_ ” said Julian, smirking flirtatiously. Ding Dong smiled, rolling his eyes as Dan snickered, elbowing Julian playfully, but setting him back on the same ankle. “Atch- ow, not-joking ow.”

“Dan, do you think your green powers can heal that?”

“Do they? I thought they just worked on plants.”

Dan had touched a big green rock back when they were swimming away from the fireball goblins, and now that they were out and about, he was throwing fireballs of his own, bright green orbs that knocked out the flytraps they were trying to avoid and made seeds grow into vines they could climb.

“Am I your favorite vegetable, Ding Dong?”

“Julian. Of course you are.”

“Yeah, man, I love eggplant!” piped Dan, summoning a handful of green sparks. “It’s… _really_ hard to prepare but it’s worth it!”

“Julian, what’s your favorite vegetable?”

“It’ssss...” Julian spaced, sounding out the first thing that came to mind. “Kummmquaaat.”

“ _Alright_ , I object to that on _two counts!_ ” Ding Dong announced, making Julian giggle. “One, you’ve _never_ eaten kumquat. _Nobody_ has eaten kumquat. And two, I _know_ you only picked that because it has ‘cum’ in the name.”

“Three!” Dan laughed. “Kumquat is a _fruit!_ ”

“Well, so am I, so I guess that settles that,” Julian finished with a shrug. The dim cavern was filled with the echoes of their howling and wheezing laughter.

It didn’t feel nearly as claustrophobic anymore.

“Julian,” Dan finally sighed. “You sure know how to keep it rolling, dude.”

“Should prolly quit while I’m ahead,” Julian mumbled, yawning.

Ding Dong set a hand on his shoulder. “That was a long swim, wasn’t it.” he sympathetically murmured, but Julian shook his head.

“I feel great, actually- like I just took a nap or something. I could probably climb this wall now-”

“Wait, what about your leg?” asked Dan. Ding Dong sneered as Julian pushed himself up the first two footholds.

“He was just trying to get your attention, right Julian?”

“No, it really hurt a minute ago! It just feels better now.” Julian looked down, over his shoulder at Dan. “You healed me, didn’t you?”

“What?” asked Dan, his hands still glowing green with an unused charge. “No I didn’t, I didn’t even get to fire a shot!”

“Julian,” Ding Dong frowned, pouting in thought. “You said you feel like you just woke up?

“Yeah?”

“You’ve said that before,” he mused, mostly to himself. “That’s what healing _feels_ like-”

“So what healed-” Dan started to ask, but his attention was drawn back to Ding Dong.

The alien seemed to be in full concentration mode as he knelt down next to the pool they’d paused beside- the surface rippling with the schools of leech creatures they’d been dodging thus far- and thrust his hand in.

“No- _No- N’-aww fuck!_ ” Dan yelled as the leeches swarmed- clamping thousands of tiny teeth into Ding Dong’s exposed limb.

Ding Dong shrieked, kicking away from the pool and shaking his hand- individual leeches falling free, but not enough, not fast enough- he slammed into the wall that Julian was already jumping down from. Julian grabbed Ding Dong’s wrist and squeezed, pulling free as many leeches as he could and flinging them blindly in the direction of the pool, squeezing harder as bits of porcelain flesh and flecks of cyan blood came with them.

“Stop! _Stop!_ ” Dan cried, firing a burst of green energy where their hands met. The rest of the creatures dissolved away, leaving behind what remained of Ding Dong’s hand to dangle bonelessly from Julian’s grip.

“Why the fuck did you do that?!” Julian admonished, trying to scold and comfort in the same breath, using his free hand to wipe the secretions from Ding Dong’s watery eyes.

“It was a test-” he whimpered, his voice strained and quiet. “ _Something_ healed you, so I thought- _I thought- I don’t know-..._ ”

Dan approached quietly, gingerly stepping around the two until he’d made it to Ding Dong’s other side, kneeling next to him to inspect the damage. It would probably be more help if he had any idea what he was looking at.

“Ding Dong, _dude_ ,” he whispered emphatically. “I know you love science and shit, but-” Ding Dong seemed to catch his breath at that, grabbing Dan’s wrist with his intact grasper.

“What did you just do?” he demanded, squeezing Dan’s wrist with unexpected force.

“Wh- what are you talking about?!”

“You _said_ something-!”

“I- ‘I know you love science’?”

“That wasn’t it-?”

“D-Dude, I don’t know what-!”

“Ding Dong!” Julian exclaimed, taking them both by surprise. “Try ‘Ding Dong’!”

“‘Ding-dong’?”

“...My _name,”_ Ding Dong spoke, calm, direct. “Say my _name._ ”

“ _Ding Dong_.”

Ding Dong let go of Dan’s wrist, and Julian let go of Ding Dong’s.

Because Ding Dong’s hand had completely returned to normal.

Julian grinned. “Yer a wizerd, Danny.”

“Well, a magic-user more or less,” Ding Dong nonchalantly corrected, looking over his newly-restored hand, flexing it. “It seems like you can direct your spells verbally. Cool that it defaults to healing when you say somebody’s name, but there’s probably more to it.”

“Ding Dong.” Dan stated, putting a hand on his shoulder and staring deep into his eyes. “Don’t you _ever_ scare me like that again. I nearly _shit_ myself, and _you know me-_ I am _not_ a particularly poopy person, so you _know_ I’m being serious.”

Julian was already laughing hard enough to wheeze. Ding Dong raised his reformed hand in a three-fingered scout salute. “You have my word.”

“Your word doesn’t mean shit- and neither does that salute!” Dan hissed, not appreciating the alien’s sudden joking attitude. “You don’t even have enough fingers to do it right!”

“Well, whose fault is that?” Ding Dong hummed, still smirking. “You’re the one who just fixed it, you could’a thrown another one in there if you really wanted to.”

Dan laughed now, too, the absolute ridiculousness of it all catching up to him.

“Come on, you finger-licking cheapskate, we better get a move-on before you two use up all the oxygen.”


	44. Tupperware LAN Party

How do you hide a combination spaceship/time machine in midtown Los Angeles?

You travel back in time and bury it where a park will be in the present day, then travel forward to the present day! It was at the end of one such park, at the end of one such day wherein Brian led Ross down a manhole in the bushes into the combination spaceship/time machine presently acting as TWRP HQ.

Immediately it was everything the abandoned Grump Space wasn’t. The distant murmur of conversation, the hum of computers, the occasional burst of boisterous laughter. Already somebody was coming down the hallway to greet them!

Brian elbowed Ross, pulling a black balaclava over his face. Ross raised an eyebrow at him- and sure enough, the angry-eyes were in full force, glaring at him in response. Apparently a staring contest wasn’t what Brian wanted, the older man grabbed the hood at the back of Ross’s neck and pulled it up over Ross’s hair.

“Brian-” Ross hissed, but Brian shushed him, tugging at the fabric over his own mouth. “Wh- I don’t have-”

“Ninja Brian! Welcome back! And who’s your associate?”

Ross panicked and pulled his black undershirt over his mouth, turning to face the spirited figure that approached. Doctor Sung! Ross wanted to greet him- of course, they had already met- but something was different about these circumstances. Something business-like, something that required him to listen more than speak. Brian stared Sung in the visor, but the alien’s mustachioed grin didn’t falter.

“Perfect! I can’t wait to introduce you to everyone!”

Sung turned, walking back down the main hallway toward the twin bays at the rear of the craft. Ross had drawn this ship before, but he’d never been allowed inside it. He didn’t know what the rules were, exactly. Did everybody in here have to have some kind of goofy sci-fi alter-ego?

Sure enough, they crossed into the bay on the left and were met with a rainbow of costumed individuals- here is where the chattered originated. People sat side by side at banks of computers, eyes locked on on the streams on their monitors, pencils scratching on pads of paper. Strangers Ross didn’t recognize, but he didn’t get a very good look beyond the masks when he was attacked by a churlish mass of- Feathers?!

 _CHRRROOO!!_ Ross caught the grumpy pigeon with practiced care, the bird warbled at the familiar touch, but what was Feathers doing-?

“ _Oh nooo!_ I’m sorry, hold on- _Oooh, Feathers, don’t attack the new guy!_ ”

Holly. Ross wanted so badly to speak now, to greet her, to ask what she was doing in a place like this-

“Oh, I’m so sorry Ro-” she gasped, making eye contact with him. Hooded, masked, her own little winged helmet reflecting his unusual look. “Ruh- RubberNinja.”

“Commander Holly, First Officer Feathers! Is there a problem?” asked Sung, tilting his pylon like a confused puppy. Holly faltered, gingerly taking Feathers back from Ross and giving him a comforting scritch.

“This is RubberNinja. I thought he gave up the cowl a long time ago, but...” She seemed to search Ross’s face- and Ross wasn’t Brian. He couldn’t summon centuries of rage into a steely glare every time he covered his mouth- and this was Holly after all. He gave her what he could. A slow blink, a dip of the chin. It wasn’t satisfying for either of them, but it would have to do for now.

“You know each other! Perfect! RubberNinja, is it? I’m sure you’ll fit right in!”

Brian put a hand on Ross’s back, and they started to walk again- though Ross glanced over his shoulder as Holly sat down at her computer station, Feathers nestling comfortably into a nook between towers. Ross breathed a silent sigh as Brian led him away, to the other end of the room where Commander Meouch, Lord Phobos, and Havve Hogan were stationed. Meouch leaned over Phobos’s shoulder, seeming to muter about something interesting going on onscreen. Havve sat on a crate nearby, his red, robotic optics staring across the room.

“Commander Meouch! Explain to our friend what we’re doing here!”

“Explain it yourself!” Meouch grunted, not even bothering to look up. It seemed he was in a mood, so focused on the screen that it was a wonder Phobos could see at all with the mane in his face. “Phobos, zoom in on that. What _is_ that?”

“Very well!” said Sung, turning back to the two ninjas with a grin. “Welcome to the Tupperware Remix Party Headquarters (temporarily stationed in the Ninja Sex Party Spaceship-slash-Time Machine)! Facing the threat of hostile invasion, we’ve collected a ragtag bunch of amateur heroes to aid us in collecting intel! We believe the key to defeating these beings is hidden in their own broadcasting! In fact, their publications are _so_ densely packed with information, it takes all of us watching continuously to determine if we’re even seeing anything of value!”

“You make it sound like we’re _bad_ at it, Sung!” Meouch growled, finally looking their way. He seemed surprised, his ears twitching to attention on spotting Ross- then squinting in suspicion at Brian. “You have another one, Brian? What year is it out there?”

Brian didn’t budge.

“Congrats. Looks just like you. As I was saying, we’ve sussed out a decent bit of the Let’s Players’ operations from the strams alone, but what we really need is insider information. And I know what you’re thinking- you know we’ve got people on the inside, _Brian_ knows we’ve got people on the inside, Phobos, show ‘em.”

Meouch stepped back and Phobos nodded, gesturing toward the screen as he queued up an earlier clip they’d recorded when watching the Game Grumps stream, inexplicably reproduced in soft focus with fizzling VHS tracking lines.

“ **Greetings, Newbies. My name is BigKush, and** _ **this**_ **is the Suggestion Box.** ” On the screen, Arin Hanson and a black-clad doppelganger of him, ("BigKush", apparently) were facing off, the copycat making a wide gesture around the gray room they were in- along with all the rest of the Earthlings. “ **Allow us to access your minds, your memories. Every game you’ve ever played will be added to the collective consciousness-** ”

Ross frowned under his impromptu mask, brow lowering in thought- but he felt Brian’s hand on his shoulder grow the least bit heavier, the older man’s glare dipping from Meouch’s face as the feed continued, the room onscreen lighting up rainbow as each Youtuber accepted the terms.

“That’s right,” the cat-man growled, “ _every last one of ‘em is compromised._ ”


	45. Vaporwave Obelisk

Matt needed a cigarette. He hadn’t had one since last night, before all this madness began, and the nicotine withdrawal was really starting to dig its claws into him. He’d found Ethan and Ryan. They were right at the start of the new level, and Matt was chewing his fingernails, thinking hard about whether to bring them, unarmed, into this new level. This new level that, at first glance, looked like it might be something cute and simple and 16-bit, but how many parodies had they played? How many spinoffs and remakes and bootlegs could be hiding deadly traps around any of these brightly-colored corners for them?

He flicked on his Google Glass and brought open the Earth-Loving Grumps Guild, checking the map. Strangely enough, the other teams were hanging around the same area- farther down the line than SuperMega of course- and was it just Matt or did the colors seem a little off? He sighed, retreating to the guild page. There were many comments now, in both English and the alien language, but still in chronological order. And there at the top…

What had Brown Brick called them? “The Diabolical Developer”?

Matt laid back in the cool grass between the podiums holding his unconscious teammates, frowned up at the pixel-gradient sky, and slid into Zexpectrika’s DMs.

 

_hey Zexpektrika this is Matt from earthloving grumps_

_I know how this is gonna sound but_

 

_team SuperMega is having trouble with the level selection_

_we haven’t come across any good weapons or powerups_

_and we’re dying a lot_

_like a lot a lot_

 

_is there something we can do to improve our chances?_

_thanks in advance_

_Matt_

 

He sent them off, almost immediately feeling regret. Why on Earth was he messing with the Powers that Be of this ship? This could ruin things for everybody if the Let’s Players took it the wrong way-!

Matt was shaken from his thoughts by a new notification. A direct message. From Zexpectrika.

 

**LONG DISTANCE TELEPORTAL REQUESTED**

**DEPARTURE: StH2_92_vers01.76 DESTINATION: The Pyramid**

**ACCEPT? [ I ] [ O ] 10**

 

That ten became a nine, became an eight. Matt swore under his breath and looked to his two catatonic compatriots. Zexpectrika wanted to see him in person? Five. Four. Fuck- he needed to decide. Three- Yes. [ I ]. No point in putting it off… Matt’s glasses grew bright, he winced, shutting his eyes from the intensity. Had it been this bad the first time?

After the bright light came the nausea, then the difference in gravity, and then…

If Matt thought that the grass he’d been lying on was soft, whatever was under him now was so soft he was sinking into it. He opened his eyes to the ceiling above- far, far above- repeating squares ascending into the distance, thick, cottony clouds hovering at various altitudes within the structure, illuminating the space with a golden haze, an indoor sunset.

Matt sat up and looked around the room, the swanky space embodying the concept of opulence. It was a silken bed that he was sinking into, a bed big enough to comfortably seat a pair of horses, nested in a golden framework, flanked by potted plants and marble columns. A ramp of marble tiles descended from the edge of the bed to a path dividing a wide pool of sparkling cyan water. More strange plants dotted the artificial oasis, alien imitations of palms and cacti, coiled fronds and abstract spines stretched from patterned ceramics into the pool, into the path. At the far end, in the hazy distance, an enormous triangle peaked from the ground, a swirling red vortex within.

He turned, his hand sliding across smooth, smooth silk til he faced the headboard of this extravagant throne- a black monolith, with three stripes along its facing side, interrupted by four inset spheres, pearlescent green, an imitation of irises with moon-shaped pupils…

Until they blinked, and Matt realized they were all looking at him.

As much as Matt didn’t want to piss himself on the ludicrously expensive-looking furniture, he was 90% of the way there when the monolith blinked again, and a buzzing began. It was metallic, like tesla coils, or ball bearings rattling together, but before Matt could place the sound, it had condensed itself into something resembling speech. Matt winced, attempting to parse it.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, and the monolith’s eyes flexed, the lower lids lifting as if displaced by a smiling mouth that Matt couldn’t see.

“ **Hi there, MATTHWATSON!** Welcome to The Pyramid!”

“Oh! You’re- you’re Zexpectrika?”

The fear had fallen away as soon as he realized it was talking to him, but it returned with a vengeance as two limbs- were they limbs?- lifted from either side of the frame at the back of the bed and came his way. Each one was formed of multiple levitating spheres, the smallest two, the ones nearest him, were decorated with four massive, arrowhead-shaped claws. He jumped to his feet, but before he could run down the ramp, the claws of one hand clamped around him!

It knocked the wind out of him, but it wasn’t a crushing amount of pressure. It was a firm grip, as if he were a skittish animal (and to be fair, he did feel like one) as it pulled him back up to the bed. More buzzing, mechanical speech reached Matt’s ears.

“ _Bones. Fur. Flesh._ You are **so small,** Matt! _Let me see you!_ ”

The stone being lifted from its hiding place and lumbered on three more limbs to the bed, pulling Matt to its other side, where four more eyes looked at him. Now that it was on the bed, the obsidian creature wasn’t as big as Matt had thought it was. Its- _their?_ \- trapezoidal head(?) and the ruddy orb it rested on was about his height, the claws each a forearm in length. It was just as interested in him as he was in it, the claws of the other limb brushing at his hair, tapping his glasses, gingerly lifting a leg, an arm. Matt wiggled his fingers as they inspected his hands, and the eyes seemed pleased, the buzzing forming a strange crackling sound. Laughter?

It set him down on the bed and he stretched his legs out to keep from being pulled into the pit formed by the alien’s weight. “So, Z- Zexpectrika? You got my message?”

Zexpectrika crossed two of their limbs and closed two of the four eyes on the near side in a thoughtful expression. “ **Matthwatson** , _I did read your message and I must say_. The game **has changed.** ”


	46. Intellectual Range

“Brown Brick explained it to us.”

“She _sorta_ explained it to us.”

Chris’s various blades worked perfectly well on these enemies. Better than perfect- the keyblade was overpowered, it seemed, against the undead. The Let’s Players hadn’t touched this level, whether because of the spooky atmosphere, the zombified faux-humans, or the front entrance having a rounded doorknob (the scratches all over the door suggested the lattermost, though the zambos could have been equally responsible).

“The weapons we have do _number_ damage, _meta_ damage.”

“And armor protects against that damage.”

“So it doesn’t hurt, but it can still result in dying.”

Chris hummed, a high-pitched impression of somebody as he shoved the headless, ragdolling corpse under a table with the tip of the keyblade. “Doesn’t explain the punch workin’ on it...”

Suzy sighed, searching through a bookshelf around the corner. “You’re right, it doesn’t make sense.”

Arin looked over at the two of them from his gunner post, watching another virtual corpse in case it decided to come after them.

“Suzy,” he said, a wide-eyed expression on his face. “Fake weapons, fake damage.”

Suzy leaned around the corner, brow raised. “It’s that easy?”

“Why would they do that, though?!” Chris demanded, “That’s stupid!”

Arin grinned, proud of having figured it out. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? How else would they standardize PVP? How do you regulate combat when you’ve got aliens in all different shapes and sizes and shit? Brown Brick doesn’t have arms, that lizard thing was fragile as fuck when you punched it- they’ve gotta nerf the weapons so nobody’s natural disadvantages get in the way!”

“Arin that’s-” Suzy had to think about it, but she smiled. “That’s really smart, actually! I’m surprised they’d do that-”

“But why do the _fake_ enemies make _real_ damage?” asked Chris, pointing his shortsword at the fucker under the table.

Arin’s smile dimmed, frowning at the figure lying at the end of the hall. “I… don’t know. Shit.”

Suzy laughed. “You’ll figure it out, Arin. You’re already on the right track!”

“Chris is right, though! Why would they do that? It’s not fair!”

“And they’re _stupid hard,_ too,” Chris thought aloud, opening the door to a quaint bedroom. “Ding Dong and Julian an’ me had to _cheat_ to catch up with you guys.”

“Cheat? How did you cheat?” asked Arin, backing away from the body and pointing over Suzy’s way. “Actually, Chris, I think the fluid lab is this way.”

“Nah, we got the book for the puzzle already. Also Ding Dong smuggled in a computer we stole from the Grump Space.”

Arin pulled a face at him, and Chris laughed.

“Hey, we’d have paid ya’ but cha’ weren’t there!”

“Nah, I’d of let’cha have it,” Arin shrugged, following Suzy into the bedroom. “I ain’t usin’ it.”

Suzy giggled. “You guys are getting _really_ grammar-lazy all of a sudden, it’s like we’re back in Florida or something!”

“What are you, a cop?” asked Chris, approaching the bookshelf and swapping out a white book for a red one. It was a simple puzzle, but Chris couldn’t focus much as Arin launched into an extensive Larry the Cable Guy impression that set Suzy laughing.

“ _Nao Suzy, I tell u what, the grammer I use is on account ‘a I never finish’t haigh sk_ _ü_ _le-..._ ”

Chris laughed too, but he paused, turning to the giggly pair. “What were we talking about?”

“ _Sae whud?_ ” Arin asked, failing to drop the affect.

“What were we _talking_ about? It was important, right?”

Suzy shrugged, and Arin eyeballed Chris, giving him a look of amused suspicion. “I don’t think it was _that_ important. You okay, Chris?”

Chris stared hard at the books, setting the last one in place, a dresser moving aside behind them to reveal another door. “You guys ever feel like you’re forgetting something?”

“Well, a lot actually-” said Suzy, picking at a flaking nail coat. “That’s why I keep notebooks at home with all my schedules in them.”

Arin seemed relieved. “God, yeah- it’s like, if I didn’t have my calendars and apps I wouldn’t have a _job!_ And when I’m recording Game Grumps it’s like the second it’s out of my mouth it’s not in my brain anymore, like, it’s _gone_ , dude!”

“Something like that, Chris?”

“Yeah,” Chris smiled, feeling better already. The three of them moved to the door as he laughed. “Yeah, something like that! It’s just so weird being on this ship! I lost my phone somewhere and I haven’t seen the sun in a long-ass while, so like, I don’t even know what _time_ it is anymore-!”

“Oh, hang on,” Arin cut in, fishing his phone out of his pocket and waking it to the lock screen. “It’s- wait a minute. Suzy, what time is it?”

“Um...” Suzy dug around in the pockets of her camo, pulling out the recently-cracked device and holding it up to Arin’s. “That’s not right.”

“That _can’t_ be right.”

“What? What’s up?” Chris leaned over their phones, looking at the times…

Arin’s read 8:16pm. Suzy’s, 9:44pm. An Instagram notification for 11:55pm. A Twitter post at 1:18am.

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah, uh,” started Arin, but Suzy finished.

“Looks like we have no idea what time it is, either.”

If they thought Chris was pale before, he was presently making a good argument for the existence of ghosts.

“ _Oh,_ ” he muttered. “I thought it was like, noon.”

“Noon of…?” Suzy probed.

“Of _today!_ We didn’t do all that much, did we? I mean, we did a lot of stuff, but… But we weren’t up here like, ten-eleven-twelve _hours,_ were we?”

“We _can’t_ have been up here that long,” said Arin. “Somethin' fucky's goin’ on around here...”

“I had other shit I was gonna do today! I had people to see! Calls to make?” Chris blanked, staring at his hands. “At least I’m _pretty sure_ I did.”

“Fuck,” Arin sighed, bringing up his tiara screen. “I’ve got to call Dan- we thought we were just gonna get a Power Hour out of this- this was a scouting trip more than anything-”

“Arin, Chris, _boys!_ Relax, okay?” Suzy put a hand on both of their shoulders. “Me too, but something’s _really_ messed up! We’re all _missing time!_ ”

“Oh fuck, Suzy, your stream! I am _so sorry-_ ”

“Arin, focus!” Suzy pulled him to face her. “We’ve got to call somebody back home! If we’re missing all this time, then… Then what if we’re already _too late?_ ”

**SLAM!**

Suzy and Arin’s heads whipped to face Chris- or where Chris had been standing, at least.

“Chris?”

They were alone in the bedroom now, the echoes of the abrupt sound fading into the distance.

“ _CHRIS!_ ” Arin called, attempting to bust the door down and succeeding unexpectedly well, falling to the floor with an uncomfortable _squelch_ of rotting wood and questionable matter. Suzy looked up and screamed.

Every surface of the room around them was covered in thick vines, a disgusting central bulb dangling from the second floor ceiling, and in its tentacular clutches… was Chris.

“Hey guys. I found the boss!”


	47. Bingus-Bongus

“ _Every last one of ‘em is compromised._ The Let’s Players have unfiltered access to their brains- and that means if we tell them about our operation, the Let’s Players will have _us,_ too.”

Ross frowned, looking at the scene on Phobos’s monitor. Something wasn’t right. Several things weren’t right, in fact, but the first and foremost on Ross’s mind made him shrug off Brian’s hand and approach, pointing silently at one of the humans in the rainbow room.

Chris O’Neill and his big holographic zero.

“What? What about him?” asked Meouch.

Ross pointed at the HUD on the screen, the display celebrating the absurdly high number of games he’d played- an unmatched achievement of over seven thousand- then to the same number floating in front of Arin’s own face, and again to Chris’s zero.

“What? So he hasn’t played any games?”

Ross shook his head.

“No? Who is this guy? Samurai Barry, _who is this guy?!_ ” Meouch roared.

“Huh? Oh!” From the other side of the row of terminals rolled a familiar bearded man in a hakama, slurping a 7/11 cup. He scooted his wheeled desk chair over to the monitor and squinted at it. “ _Oh!_ That’s Oney!”

Meouch glared at the man, who smiled as if he was done. “Who.”

“Chris O’Neill! He’s cool, he does animation and music and like, blender stuff...”

Barry glanced around at the others in the room, grinning as he caught sight of Ross.

“Oh, hey! Welcome to the crew!”

Ross nodded in acknowledgment.

“Ooh, right, ninja. Got it.”

“Samurai Barry,” spoke Sung, greeting the overly-casual samurai with the utmost respect. “This Oney, he plays videogames, correct?”

“Yup,” said Barry. “S’got his own channel for it and everything- OneyPlays. Why’s he got a zero?”

Meouch seemed deep in thought, scratching his fluffy mane below his chin. “Barry. Will you investigate this _one weird detail_ to satisfy our newbie?”

Barry shrugged- “Sure!” -and rolled back to his computer.

Meouch gave a long-suffering sigh and turned back to Ross, who had retracted his hand and returned to Brian’s side.

“I’m sure Brian’s got plans for you, so you two can go canoodle in the briefing room.”

Sung spoke up, perky as ever: “Remember, it’s not a violation of your vows of silence to text me!”

 

Ross nodded, and Brian’s hand returned, ushering him out of the computer lab and back into the hall- crossing it to the chamber on the opposite side. They entered what looked like a recording space, half powered-down computers, the other half microphones and soundproofing foam. Brian closed the door behind them and tore off his balaclava, biting off a sharp curse- sounding deadpan as ever in spite of the circumstances. Ross pulled his shirt back down.

“Brian?”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Ross.”

“Fer what?”

“You can’t contact our friends now. You know too much.”

“Brian. You know I want to help you guys, right? Maybe they need a fresh pair of eyes on-”

“That’s not why I brought you here.”

Ross took a breath, pulling his hood back down. “M’getting ahead of myself, I know.”

Brian watched him, silently.

“I jus’ felt so hopeless, like, ‘what could I do’, y’know? This was so much bigger than me, than anything I’d ever done, and I couldn’t take it.”

Brian stared.

“Then I thought I’d lost my best friend in the whole world, and then Holly, she was my-…”

Ross shook his head, newly confident.

“And now you’re saying it’s not too late, that there’s something I can do to help, right? So what’s the plan?”

Brian’s humanity trickled back into his face, closing his eyes and letting out a disappointed-sounding sigh. “It’s not Plan A, but I know you’re capable. Ross. RubberNinja.”

His eyes opened, ice blue.

“The Let’s Player scout ship is still in midtown Los Angeles. Surrounded by the dumbass military, but. **Still. There.** We need to run as much reconnaissance on that scout ship as we possibly can. How it moves. What it’s made of. What’s _on it._ We may even have to find a weak point in the military guard and _get aboard._ I realize this is a lot to ask, especially because you haven’t been in the ninja game for some time, but-”

Ross’s jaw was set and his eyes were sparkling. Brian smirked.

“Why do I even bother. Let’s get you suited up.”

* * *

“This is taking way too long,” Ding Dong complained, pulling the laptop out of his shirt. “I’m gonna smash it.”

“M’gonna wreck it,” Julian mumbled cheerily as Dan leaned over to Ding Dong.

“Where were you keeping that? Is that- is that my laptop?”

“Um,” Ding Dong started, turning to Julian, who gave him a look.

“Tell the truth...” Julian warned, like a scolding parent.

“Yeah, we got it from the Grump Space,” admitted Ding Dong. “It helps compress the longer levels. It’s how we caught up to you guys in the trials.”

“That wasn’t my question. That was neither of my questions!”

Ding Dong closed his eyes and his voice trembled with faux nerves as he turned to Dan. “Danny, I don’t know how to tell you this… But I’m not human like you and Julian-”

Dan groaned, though it barely disguised a smile. “Oh god, is it gonna be some gross alien thing that I don’t wanna know about? Is that it? Am I not gonna want that laptop back?”

“I mean, probably,” said Julian, turning Ding Dong around and tugging at the back of his shirt, just above his tail. “Y’see, Dingn’s species-”

“NOPE! No-ho-ho-hope! I changed my mind! I don’t even want to think about it!”

“Aww.”

Julian was disappointed, but Ding Dong bit his lip, stifling a chuckle as he went about bringing up Xertz’s level editor.

“Don’t laugh!” Julian pouted. “I never get to talk about it!”

“Because you’re always holding yourself back! Julian,” Ding Dong replied. “Nobody minds if you go on and on about stuff you like. I mean, we edit out what’s not funny, but we like listening to your stories and stuff.”

“But...” Julian turned to Dan with a raised eyebrow.

Dan smiled, putting a hand on Julian’s shoulder. “Julian, man, you gotta live your truth. If people don’t like it, they don’t have to watch. Besides, there’s a point where some people don’t even watch for the game anymore! They want to feel like they’re on a big couch with friends, y’know? They want to get to know you-”

“That’s the problem, though!” Julian interrupted, waving a hand toward Ding Dong. “People figure out who you are and they start coming to your house and shit! Your friends go to Area Fifty-One _once_ and government agents start ringing your doorbell ‘cuz you got _“a little too specific”_ talking about your boyfriend’s anatomy! _And you know how he is about doorbells!_ ”

Dan had retracted his hand and was now blinking owlishly at an incensed Julian and an unexpectedly shy Ding Dong.

“I get confused,” the alien explained, his nublets drooping in shame.

Dan fidgeted. “I’m… so sorry that happened to you.”

“I didn’t even know you were that mad about it,” Ding Dong admitted.

Julian threw his arms wide again. “I’m _sorry!_ ”

“No, no!” Ding Dong tried to console. “This is _good,_ this is communication! Julian, I _want_ to know how you feel.”

“I feel _pissed off!_ ” Julian cried, throwing down the handle of the Poltergust Five-Thousand, which bounced off the stony ground with a clack and swung loosely behind him. “I feel- I feel like the world’s shittiest balancing act! Like I have to say shit and be public _but I can’t!_ I have to hide what I really want to say and- and I can’t talk about what makes me _happy_ because it’s gross to people? But I have to say _something_ and I just – I don’t feel like it’s _me_ that people want to know! They want something outta me. And when they get it, they don’t like it.”

It started angry, and ended more sad than anything.

“Julian…” Dan ventured, resting a hand on Julian’s shoulder. “Do you wanna talk about Ding’s weird alien back?”

“...Yeah.”


	48. The Human Condition

“ **Matthwatson,** _I did read your message and I must say._ The game **has changed.** Lately, experienced Let’s Players either rest on their laurels or demand a greater challenge from the **CollectiCon.** The levels they have made of your minds are _more dangerous than anything our eyes have seen before-_ optimized for **expert players,** _greater obstacles, fewer powerups._ You have been doing **far better than expected.** ”

 

Matt frowned, finding himself narrowing his brows more than usual, for Zexpectrika’s benefit. In spite of the desert aesthetic, the wide-open room and the silky bed Matt and Zexpectrika were lounging on were as cold as an air-conditioned mall, and just as empty-feeling.

“That’s not good enough! We- our guild- we have a goal! And it’s frustrating not being able to keep up with the rest of the team...”

“ **Competitive,** are we? **A true Let’s Player,** determined to get ahead, even amongst your _teammates-_ ”

“That’s not it.” Matt sighed.

Zexpectrika was truly _alien,_ just _nothing_ on them was analogous to a human, there was nothing he could use to _relate_ to this being. All he could do was test the waters and hope…

“Humans… We’re competitive, yeah, but we’re _social_ about it. It’s… We’re a social species! Let’s plays for us are a social activity! It’s how we meet people, how we make friends- at the end of a long, rough day all we want to do is wind down and, y’know, play a game? With friends? For fun?”

Zexpectrika stared at him, and Matt couldn’t discern any emotion from those eyes.

“ _Game. Play game._ _Friends?_ _Friends_ _. For Fun._ ” It was a continuous mutter, like a computer processing bits of data. “ _A truly. Social. Species._ ”

Zexpectrika blinked, all four eyes darting about.

“ **Oh my god!** You must be **so lonely** without your friends! _Let’s get them for you!_ ”

With a wave of their claw, a pair of marble platforms rose to either side of the enormous bed, blue beams emanating from each- and within each beacon flickered a deep blue shape, a mirage that solidified itself into a human form. There they were- Ethan and Ryan- exactly as Matt had left them.

And by God, was Matt happy to see them! Maybe there was something to what he’d said after all, though it had turned out to be more verbal diarrhea amalgamation of an old anthropology lesson and something Arin had said in some Grumps episode he’d edited. Zexpectrika didn’t even wait for Matt to get up, reaching into the beacons with floating orb limbs and picking up his two teammates like dolls, setting them next to him on the bed as they came to.

“ _Whoa_ -ho-hoa! What the _fuck_ is that?!” Ryan yelped, shuffling to his feet, sinking into the bed, looking up at Zexpectrika with wide-eyed wonder. They held out a clawed limb-orb and Ryan instinctively grabbed it for balance, catching his breath. He looked to Matt for confirmation, that this wasn’t a boss or an enemy about to kill them-

Matt smiled up at him, and that seemed good enough for Ryan.

Ethan seemed to pick up on the fact that Zexpectrika was friendly, looking up with equal awe. “Oh wow, _wow,_ what is she? _Those big googly eyes!_ ”

Matt laughed at their reactions. “Guys, this is Zexpectrika- she sponsored our guild!”

“Oh wow, thank you~!” cooed Ethan, but Ryan’s head snapped to look at Matt with a questioning stare.

He mouthed the word _‘diabolical’_ with a suspicious squint and a raised eyebrow. Matt nodded, whispering his own _‘Just go with it,’_ speaking up to address Zexpectrika again.

“So I was just asking about what we can do to _get good,_ y’know, like the other Let’s Players. Like, is there a better way to go about beating levels and finding powerups than what we’ve been doing?”

“As I was saying, **I-** ” the four eyes blinked out of sync with each other, glancing between the three humans. “You don’t have a **mindlink?** ”

“What? No-”

“ **Alright, good!** So the game has become more difficult in order to satisfy the _desires of veteran players._ **Powerups** are rarer, **weapons** aren’t as effective against other players, bosses are **bigger, deadlier, more frustrating!** It’s an awful pity for you Noobs, _being thrown into the mix this way._ ”

“Wh- but that sucks for us!” Ryan whined, “What are we supposed to do with that?!”

“Ah, **Elirymagee!** As your **Guild Sponsor** it is my duty to make sure you succeed! _I will offer you a deal._ ”

“Uh oh,” Ethan mumbled, straddling one of the larger orbs near Zexpectrika’s body. “For what?”

“ _Teach me your ways._ I am fascinated by these new worlds you have brought us! Your **culture** is strange, _your_ **bodies** _are strange!_ ” Zexpectrika’s eyes seemed to shine with enthusiasm, they punctuated their sentences by messing with Ryan, lifting his hat, tugging at his clothes, prodding him in the middle (which made him squeak and fall back to the bed beside Matt)- and buzzed with laughter. “I have already had to invent **three new classes** for _the colors you wear!_ Show me what it is to be what you are, _and I will reward you_ **handsomely.** ”

Matt laced his fingers in front of his lips, glancing side to side at Ryan and Ethan as Zexpectrika mirrored him, two of their arms with claws meshed along their short side. “What do you guys think?”

Ethan had climbed up to the top of Zexpectrika’s trapezoid and was trying not to fall while keeping his legs out of their eyes. “I dunno, she seems cool.”

“Ryan?”

Ryan was lying on his back and sinking into a silken pit of his combined weight with Matt. “What, you don’t trust her?” he giggled, loud enough that Matt grew flustered, worried Zexpectrika might hear.

“Wh- no, of course I- of course I trust her, Ryan! It’s- Okay, I… Can we talk privately for a moment, Zexpectrika?”

Claws still linked with two limbs, a third limb waved them away- their four eyes looking up toward Ethan instead, a fourth limb nudging him back into balance atop their boxy head-shape.

“ _Okay, Ryan, you’re right, I don’t trust her. This was a huge mistake and I didn’t mean to drag you guys into this-_ ”

“ _Whoa, come on, Matt- look at this place! She could totally hook us up!_ ”

“ _Why do you think they call her diabolical?! This is straight up a deal with the devil. We say yes to this, we’re gonna go to Hell next time we die-_ ”

“ _We’re already in Hell, Matt! Let’s live a little! Maybe we can get some cool shit out of it at least-_ ”

“ _Okay, Ryan,_ ” Matt snapped at him. “ _What’s your plan? How are we gonna explain the human condition to fuckin’ uh- fuckin’ Flatland over here?_ ”

“ _Well, I’ve got one idea._ ” Ryan grinned as Matt pouted. “ _That’s one idea more than you got, huh?_ ”


	49. On My Mind

Something heavy had settled over Glendale. It wasn’t silence. It could never be silent.

Between the buzzing power lines, the crying babies, the barking dogs, and the shrill whine of sirens somewhere far away but not far enough, the night sounded much the same as ever. No, the atmosphere was different. Somewhere just north of downtown LA, the sky was bright as daylight.

From under the vibrant orange clouds, massive stadium-esque lighting illuminated a giant pink mustache lying atop the ruins of an apartment building, and the only way a civilian could see it was from up here- Griffith Park.

The underwhelming Mount Hollywood beneath his sensible shoes and a weathered pair of binoculars in his hand, Zach climbed a rock just off the trail and wished he’d brought a blanket. Or maybe a ghillie suit, at least then he’d blend in with all the snipers that were surely training their sights his way, if the military had any sense. The military boundary line was two city blocks deep, combat-ready officers facing both directions to turn away the homeless and the curious and the confused civilian commuter alike while holding the strange machine hostage.

It was no secret, though, or an extremely poorly kept one. People across America were tuning in to watch their favorite satellite TV shows to find every channel preempted by a streaming service they’d never heard of showing a specific selection of Californians playing realistic recreations of various video games- or at least Zach had heard as much.

Today had been a smear of time, from the moment he woke up all the way to now, freezing his ass off under the Hollywood sign for a glimpse at the thing that took nearly a decade of hopes and dreams away from him. More, probably-! What did _animation_ matter- what did _art_ matter- what did _anything_ matter in a world where not only did aliens exist but their immediate crimes against humanity were being swept under the rug in favor of their apparent love of earthly _video gaming culture?_

He could see it. Zach hadn’t known he would have been able to spot that particular apartment building from up here. Zach hadn’t known he could be enraged by a particular shade of _pink_ either, but here he was, _seething_. He always thought he’d be _somewhat_ chill when the aliens came. He was chill to all the aliens he knew- to the _one_ he knew, rather. Another reason to be angry- _Godspeed, Ding Dong, taken too soon by the same force that ended the rest of your kind!_ -a personal tragedy, an unprompted attack. Zach didn’t have any plans but to sit and stare. He wasn’t one to give up so easily, but he was merely one man against the unknown. So he sat there, not knowing. And time smeared on.

* * *

Suzy’s blade sliced thickly through the vine holding Chris, freeing him to slam first into the second floor overhang and then to the ground below. Suzy, herself, finished her leap to the other side of the landing with the help of her cape.

“CHRIS!” Arin called, kneeling by the rough edge of the rotting hardwood on the upper floor, peering into the pit and sighing in relief at the long, pained groan Chris gave in response.

“Arin! The pod!” Suzy shouted, pointing at the dripping, pulsating cluster of leaves dangling in the center of the open atrium in front of them as the wide outer coat lifted. Yellow-green plumes of fog poured from a shining fruit in the center.

“ _Weak point!_ ” Arin announced, firing a line of blaster bolts into the orb- the entire central mass of the plant creature shuddering and bellowing with each blow until the outer leaves closed once again. “Aw, damn it! Now we gotta wait?!”

“Arin- look out!”

Arin’s legs were pulled out from under him by a thick cluster of vines that slid across the balcony. He landed on his butt, his unprotected hand hitting the ground to push himself up with a splash and a hiss. “ _Acid?!_ ” he yelped- then wailed as the tingle began to _burn_ , gripping his bare hand with his armored one, curling in on himself and trying to will the pain to stop.

Suzy chirped a curse as the pod opened again, her gunner husband thoroughly preoccupied. Well, the sword worked before, didn’t it? She tossed it in her hand, trying to feel the weight of it, cocked it back, and let it fly.

_SHUNK!_

Suzy’s aim was true, and her blackened blade dug deep into the billowing orb. The plant squealed and shook, the rustle of leaves from the network of vineage coating the vaulted ceiling was deafening. The thick, veiny pod petals attempted to close over it, but one of the four lobes caught on the hilt and stuck open- leaving the glowing core uncovered.

“Fuck yeah, Suzy!” It was Chris, cheering from the lower level. He flung the keyblade at the opening, spinning it like a boomerang- it struck once, then rebounded, gaining another free hit on its return trip.

The main body of the plant oozed and thrashed, and at first they thought it might be the source of the high-pitched whine that permeated the room- but no, it was Arin and his fully-charged mega buster!

_Vreeeeee- **B’ZOW**!_

A crackle of white-hot energy burst like lightning across the space. Suzy covered her eyes, hiding under her cape as she felt steaming drops of fruit juice splattering across her, the patter of fluids dribbling down from the freshly flash-fried flytrap. The beast wilted, and in the coils of its collapsing vines on the ground floor, the exit portal appeared. Chris cheered and whistled from his place on the floor, but Suzy shook herself off and hurried to Arin’s side.

“Are you okay?” she asked, gently placing a palm on his shoulder. Arin hissed. He had his hand balled up in his shirt, curling around it in his effort to mitigate the damage. His buster arm was still smoking from the charge shot, and Suzy wondered if that hurt, too, if the heat was real. Arin shook his head.

“It’s bad,” he admitted through grit teeth. “I think I might lose my hand.”

Suzy tucked her arm under his shoulder and helped him pull himself to his feet. “Arin, they healed us from being _dead_ , surely they can-”

Arin looked at her, and she had to brush brown and bleach-blond hair aside to look at his teary brown eyes. “Would you still love me if I didn’t have hands?”

Suzy smiled and kissed his fuzzy cheek. “Of course I would- you know I would.”

“But- but you’d have to _feed me_ and _bathe me_ until I figured it out myself-! You’d have to _wipe my butt!_ It’d be like this _big gross baby-!!_ ”

Suzy laughed, the two of them hopping down to the lower floor where Chris waited- and Chris _had_ waited, watching them silently through the exchange. They expected teasing, really, but Chris loosely scrubbed at his face with a tired air, nodding toward the portal. With a shared glance and a shrug, Arin and Suzy followed him in.


	50. Mission Confirmed

Zach couldn’t tell how long he’d been in his trance, his eyes dried out in the desert air, the rock he was sitting on sucking his body heat like a fantastical leech, when something crossed his line of vision.

Movement. There was a _figure_ on the roof of one of the buildings between him and the that mustache. Zach quickly pulled the binoculars away form his tortured eyes, blinking frantically as he adjusted the focus and honed in on the figure. Hooded. No discernible features. Damn. But they did seem to be there for the same purpose he was- the view.

Setting up some kind of camera on a tripod, the other person seemed to fiddle with a number of things on the rooftop. Zach wondered if they might be some kind of guerrilla filmmaker, an amateur documentarian, before they turned and jumped off the roof.

“ _No-!”_ Zach bellowed aloud, disturbing the peace of the nature park, causing something in a bush nearby to fly off. Panicked, he made to follow the doomed individual with the binoculars, but overshot- pulling back to see the stranger roll to a landing on the next roof over. A freerunner, a traceur, then- they hopped over an air exchanger and across an alley to the fire escape of the taller building next door, beginning to climb. Zach’s heart sunk as the hooded figure disappeared over the roofline, into the bright, low-lying clouds- but as he reconfigured the binoculars back to the device on the rooftop, he realized.

Somebody was _doing_ _something_. And now he knew _where_.

Zach shuffled off the big rock and back down to the trail. _Now_ he had to be careful. _Now_ he didn’t want to be spotted by a stray sniper- not by anybody. He couldn’t afford to be stopped now, climbing the fence to get out of Griffith Park and escaping back into Glendale, making as close to a beeline toward the mustache as possible- hoping he knew what rooftop it was on, or if he’d even be able to get there. He had no idea what he was going to do if there wasn’t something as simple as a fire escape on that building, or if it was behind the military blockade, or if he’d lost his way already and was wandering through Glendale like some kind of simpleton.

* * *

“I don’t know why I thought it’d be gross- that’s really interesting, actually!”

Dan’s compliments seemed to have improved Julian’s mood, the three of them wandering through the third level that Ding Dong had flattened for them, still satisfying Julian’s need to exposit his xenobiological discoveries. At some point, Ding Dong had blushed a deep gray-blue and seemed to be staying that way despite appearing invested in his laptop.

“-And he doesn’t even actually have bones! What he calls bones are just these uh, fluid balloons? Like he can just drop pressure and go all floppy, it’s terrifying-!”

“-It’s not _‘terrifying’_!” Ding Dong cut in, rolling his eyes. He paused, turning towards the two humans on the narrow aisle of pavement the level had shrunk into. Two-dimensional skyscrapers lined the curbs, a city at night, compressed.

“Yes it is! The first time it happened, I thought I killed you!”

“Wh-d’Ju- The _first_ time, **maybe** , but I thought you _liked_ -!”

“ _Of course I like it!_ It just took some getting used to.”

Dan was grinning. “Oh my god, I have to see this.”

“Really?” asked Ding Dong, nublets perked in interest.

“Hell yeah! Dings, honestly, you’re like the most alien alien I’ve ever met! And that’s saying something, because I also know a space pirate lion-man and an inter-dimensional cyclops.”

“Heh, good luck,” Julian chuckled. “I can usually only get him to do it after he has an org-”

“ _JULIAN!”_ Ding Dong scolded, his flushed face darkening. “It happens because I feel _safe!_ ”

Dan laughed, but stopped on turning to Julian. Ding Dong was smiling, through his embarrassed blush he seemed to feel he was sharing something positive- but Julian looked stricken.

“You make me feel safe, Julian,” the alien affirmed.

“It- But it-” Julian stumbled over his words. “Don’t happen much.”

Ding Dong sighed. “Well, between the rent and the allergies and the health issues and _the general anxiety of living_ it ‘don’t happen much’,” he hummed, thumbing the frayed dust cover still stuck to the border of the laptop’s keyboard. “But… sometimes it’s worth it. You make it worth it.”

Dan wasn’t sure if he should be present for this, but he put a hand over his heart and gushed anyway. “D’awwwh, _you two~!_ That’s the sweetest thing I ever _heard!_ ”

“Yeah,” said Julian, his tone listless but his lips pulling into an affectionate grin. “It sure is somethin’.”

_*tmp*_

Ding Dong snapped out of whatever trance he’d been in, his flesh paling as he looked to the computer in his hands. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” asked Dan, the alien’s tone worrying him. “What’s wrong?”

“It won’t let me mess with the next level.”

“What, is it a boss?” asked Julian, but Ding Dong shook his head.

“It’s a rival Guild. I think we ought to swap back, Chris is our main offense. No offense.”

“None taken,” Dan replied. “I’m just happy to know I can _do shit_ now! Maybe I can be useful-”

“Hey, nobody said you weren’t useful.”

“I know, I just. Got the impression.” Dan cleared his throat. “I wasn’t doin’ so hot when I got traded off, you know. Arin was _none too pleased_ with me.”

“Well, it’s been some time- absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

“Don’t I know it,” sighed Dan, scratching his head and shaking out his prodigious head of hair. “Alright. Maybe Arin will appreciate the new healy-dos and greeny blasts.”

“He _better_ -” Julian huffed.“You went through some shit to get those.”

“You know what? Yeah! Nobody puts Daddy in the corner!”

“Don’t. _EVER_. Say that again,” said Ding Dong.

“I’m gonna go back and show Arin what Danny Sexbang is packing!”

“ _Don’t say that either!_ ”


	51. Hardcore Parkour

Zach stopped running in a dingy alleyway, outside the first layer of the blockade. Patrolling officers, a few traffic cones and barricades, vehicles parked perpendicular to the road, the whole package. The alley was dark, Zach could make out the skeleton of a fire escape far above in what little streetlight trickled in, tracing it down into the shadows to the base of the ladder- but it was out of reach, damn his short stature. Then again, he mused, squinting at the at the dumpsters on the opposite wall of the narrow aisle, piles of trash bags and/or homeless people (too dark to tell which, rather, Zach’s eyes weren’t the greatest even in proper lighting) gathered around the edges. The first thought had been to push one of the dumpsters into position, though the concern of causing too much noise came to mind, whether he’d knock something over, or disturb a bag full of the wrong kind of trash, or upset a homeless person (depending on what those shapes really were). Maybe he could make the jump?

The alley wasn’t very big, the dumpsters would nearly double his height and from the top of the dumpster to the bottom of the fire escape ladder wasn’t nearly as far as it was from the ground… Ill-advised as it was, Zach pulled himself up to the plastic lids of the dumpster and wobbled to his feet, the lit threatening to buckle under him. It wasn’t nearly as full as he’d hoped, the rattles of his efforts starting to echo. He couldn’t hesitate any longer- he planted his feet on the metal edge beneath the plastic and kicked off, hitting the ladder a lot sooner than he’d expected, a resounding _CLANG!_ filling the alley.

A panicked Zach wrapped himself around the bottom rung and would have been content to hold his breath until the sound faded away- but something stirred in the bags by the dumpster and Zach began to climb with the fervor of a man possessed. Adrenaline held him in its fiery clutches, from the ladder to the stairs, all the way to the sixth floor.

The sixth floor being the point where the determined sprint gave way to asthmatic gasping. This was way more exercise than he usually got. Dear lord, how long had he been running? What time was it? How many miles was that? Was this worth the effort? He didn’t even know if this was the right building! He was more than halfway up, though. He couldn’t quit now.

The next flight was a slog. And the next. Things got a little easier by nine, and once he’d made it to the up to the top level he was sure he was well into his second wind. And there, on the roof, was the camera. And beyond it, more of that mustache than he ever wanted to see in his life.

The camera- the camera! He dragged his attention away from the pink eyesore and to the thing he really wanted to look at. It sat on a tripod, a number of cables snaking out of it to various devices also set on the roof alongside it- an external battery pack, something made of tin foil, a white shoebox. He leaned closer, looking at the digital HUD on the rectangular viewscreen- and he realized.

This wasn’t just a camera. This was a cell phone, and it was streaming. A private channel, an audience of one.

Well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Hello?”

 

Samurai Barry almost fell out of his chair- he snatched his phone off of the desk in a panic and dialed the main emergency number for TWRP HQ- Ninja Brian. It rang too many times for his liking, his fuzzy voice stammering out the message as soon as the silent recipient answered.

“ _Camera Brian! Ninja four is compromised!_ ”

Brian hung up.

 

Zach didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to give his identity to total strangers, but this could be his only chance at contact with… whoever it was. For whatever they were doing.

Of course, in a way, he already had. He wasn’t a total unknown- in fact, his voice was one of the most identifiable of his features, and he’d already given that away. Shit. Go hard or go home.

“Guess what, Bitch. I saw you set this camera up here.”

Commanding may not be the way to go about it, but this was his resumé submission at this point.

“You went to a lotta trouble, didn’t you? Well, lucky for you, I think we have a common interest.”

Okay so maybe he was pulling random shit out of his ass, a wild guess, a shot in the dark about the intent of somebody setting up a camera in literal goddamn Hollywood. Zach was nothing if not confident.

“I’ve got something against these fuckin’ mustache riders, and if you feel the sa--”

Something grabbed Zach’s shoulder and dragged him back, away from the camera. He turned, catching steely blue eyes, and a steely fixed-blade knife.

“Brian?!”

 

Zach had no idea what time it was when Ninja Brian threw a bag over his head and carted him off to who-knew-where. Stairs. Stairs. Pavement. Pavement. Pavement. Fence. Cobblestone. Fence. Grass. Bushes. A ladder. Tiles. People? Then a chair and a hot, bright light- and that’s when the bag was torn off.

“Hadel.”

Zach squinted into the light, at the two silhouettes on the other side. He knew that voice.

“O’Donovan. I didn’t know you were Taliban. Gonna execute me on film and get your snuff-loving jollies later?”

“Yeah, that’s him all right.”

The light switched off, and there was Ross and Brian, unmasked.

“So Zack,” said Ross, a wry smile playing at his lips. “Collab, Bro?”


	52. Troubleshooting Trios

Zexpectrika really was some kind of living computer, able to hold three conversations, watch a movie, a YouTube video, and a Snapchat, and had a couple eyes and arms left to design, model, and code all the crap they were talking about at the same time.

Matt had joked about a grenade launcher that fired Katamari and pitfall seeds and now it was sitting in his lap while he gushed about the Japanese and shared snaps from his and Ryan’s last trip there. Ryan wanted ‘some cool time travel shit like Ethan’s fleshlight’ and was showing Zexpectrika a clip from the 2002 film Clockstoppers. And Ethan, well, Ethan was cheerfully gabbing about anything and everything, showing random bits from his YouTube channel, from Mark’s, from SuperMega, talking about old games and new remakes, flowers, zombies, and cow-goat-deer-goat-cows.

 

“What is **that?** ” Zexpectrika asked, a yellow claw pointing at Matt’s phone.

“Oh, yeah, that’s a vending machine, Zex. Uh, people who wanna sell like, food and stuff, they put it in there and you have to pay money to get it out. And that one’s a gachapon- it’s the same thing except what you’re getting is supposed to be a surprise!”

“ _Surprise…_ ” Zexpectrika hummed.

 

“And then the Game Grumps, that’s Arin and Danny, they played hundred-foot Robot Golf-”

“That is a **lot of foots.** ”

“I know, right? _So many foots-_ look, they’re like, huge!”

“ _They are…_ _Inside the_ **machines?** ”

“Well, they’re controlling them basically- they’re like big cars that uh, walk? And golf- and fly? Like the movie we just watched!”

“So this is a _common thing_ on your **planet?** Does _everyone have_ these **giant machines?** ”

“Pfft, _no!_ My garage is way too small for that.”

 

“What? _No,_ we don’t have time travel!...You guys have time travel?”

“Yes? _We are traveling through time_ right now?”

“Oh my god, dude, I know _that-_ I meaaaant fuckinnn’,” Ryan squinted, gesturing loosely as he droned. “ _Not_ one second per second?”

“ **Yes?** _We are traveling through time_ **right now?** ”

“... _How?_ Are we traveling. Might I ask.”

Zexpectrika bobbled a limb, an approximation of a shrug. “It is the **CollectiCon’s** doing. **Time** is _much slower_ in **The Pyramid.** ”

“Oh, well that’s lucky,” Ryan mumbled, leaning against Zexpectrika’s central orb, the arm holding his phone starting to droop. He spoke up to address Matt, who was relaxing on another shoulder orb, chatting with the next eyeball up. “That way nobody cares if I take a nap, right?”

Matt looked up from his memories, glanced down at Ryan, and gasped- but he swallowed and nodded just the same. “Y-yeah, dude, you’re good.”

Ethan leaned over from atop Zex’s trapezoid. It was a poor angle to see why Matt sounded so concerned, but his unspoken questions were answered as Ryan nodded back, curled up in the space between two of Zexpectrika’s limbs, flickered a deep royal blue, and disappeared.

“Wh-what the fuck?!” Ethan yelped, leaning a bit too far and slipping off his perch to the soft silk bed below. “Wha- he _died!_ ”

“Yeah,” said Matt, pulling his knees up to his chest, phone dangling loosely from his palm. “That was the _thing_ we told you about. Happened during the trials, too-! He was fine and then he just… wasn’t.”

“ _Something is wrong_ with your **husband?** ”

“Yeah, he keeps- _my what?!_ ”

Zexpectrika seemed taken aback. “ **Ryan.** He _is_ _ill_ , **yes?** ”

“Ill, yes! _Husband_ _, what?_ ”

Zex’s eyes looked in several directions, buzzing in thought. “That _is_ the **word** , _isn’t it?_ ”

“It’s _A_ word!” Matt slid off of Zexpectrika’s orb and tromped through the bedcover as if it were knee-deep snow, turning to Zex and wheeling his arms to both keep balance and attempt to express just how wrong they were. “And he’s _not that!_ ”

“ **I** … Do not mean to **assume** , but _you three are not…?_ ”

“No, we’re not!”

“Not what?” asked Ethan, struggling to get to his feet.

“A… **Breeding triad?** ”

“ _THAT,_ ” Matt shouted, throwing his arms wide. “We are _not that!_ ”

“ _How strange,_ ” Zexpectrika hummed. “ _All of your kind thus far_ have resolved into a similar **triad structure.** I had _thought-_ ”

“It was _strategic!_ Look,” Matt sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know where you got that from, but humans don’t work like that- _The point is,_ Ryan’s got some kind of error with his recovery deal and we don’t know how to fix it.”

“ **CrankGameplays.** ”

“Yes?” asked Ethan, standing to attention, almost immediately losing his balance in the thicc soff.

“ **Retrieve** **Elirymagee**. _I will prepare a ticket_ for the **CollectiCon** to _repair his recovery node._ ”

Ethan saluted, shuffling through the silk to the edge of the bed and hopping over the edge and down the ramp. Matt turned to Zex as he hopped away, a frown and a squint of suspicion.

“Hey, uh, couldn’t you just make him spawn right here like y’did last time?”

Zex squinted surreptitiously back. “Are you certain you are not **involved** in some _procreative fashion?_ **Ethan** has been showing me _many videos-_ ”

“We’re _not!_ We just do it because it’s _funny!_ It’s- it’s a bit we do. We kiss and it doesn’t _mean_ anything, we’re best friends- we’re… we’re just best friends.”

“You sound… **disappointed**.”

Matt stared at the space Ryan had once filled.

“Actually, Zex. Kissing _does_ mean something. It just hasn’t been coded in yet.”

* * *

Chris made the call. They really couldn’t go on like this, not with Arin gimping around with his hands in his shirt, hunching over in pain and trying to turn it into a bit to keep Suzy laughing. His Gollum impression was going a bit long, and the level looked like it was going to be a long, boring, overly-faithful game of Monopoly. They were going to have to hobble around the whole damn board at this rate and Chris wanted absolutely no part of it.

“Hey, Ding Dong.”

“ _Chris, hey! How’s it going?_ ”

“Good, good. Arin got his ass _hand_ ed to him, though, so he ain’t doin’ so hot. You guys got any healing shit yet?”

“ _Actually, Danny?_ ”

“ _Yeah?_ ” Chris still held the phone to his ear, making Suzy giggle as the screen displaying Ding Dong- and now Dan- was floating behind his head. “ _Hi, Chris!_ ”

“ _Yeah, Dan heals now. Pretty sweet._ ”

Arin looked up with hesitant hope in his eyes. He and Suzy were sat on the raised brown curb of Mediterranean Avenue, Suzy rubbing his shoulder and offering words of comfort, even now as Arin’s unsure expression honed in on his favorite cohost.

“ ‘ _Freaky sweet, Lois_ ’,” Chris imitated, devolving into absent Peter-Griffin-esque warbling.

“ _So uh, we ready to switch back?_ ” asked Dan, waving a hand in front of the screen.

“Yeah, I think I’m ab-”

Chris disappeared and Dan abruptly arrived in his place, a bit more prepared than last time.

He turned Arin’s way with a flip of his magnificent curls, a wicked smile playing on his sharp features. Arin wilted. “Dan, listen, I-”

Dan cut him off with a few scolding clicks of the tongue. “ _Arin, Arin, Arin._ I’m willing to be the bigger man and forgive you. But first...”

Dan summoned a green flare, letting his hand glow with energy as he held it out Arin’s way. Arin unballed his hand from his shirt, but kept it curled in a loose fist, nervously offering it.

Dan took his hand with aplomb, tugging Arin out of his seat with a tight handshake and a sparkling green flourish!

“Dan- Dan, wait- _AAAAaa_ aauuugghh??”

Arin’s preemptive cry of pain turned into a Tim Allen grunt of confusion. Dan freed him, releasing his previously acid-washed palm, leaving Arin to inspect it with awe.

“Hadd’ya like me now, Bitch!” Dan crowed. “Daddy’s got the heals!”

Arin pulled him into a tight hug. “Danny, I’m sorry,” he groveled, and Dan patted his back.

“Aw, _Arin~!_ We’re good, Big Cat, we’re good.”


	53. Xenotheological Theorization

“-bout ready to- ...Fuuuuck!”

Chris groaned, disoriented by the sudden transport.

“About ready to fuck, huh?” Julian deadpanned while Ding Dong made a convincing approximation of a snort.

“Ugh,” Chris rolled his eyes. “From one happy couple to another. Listen, some weird shit happened and we need to talk about it before I forget again.”

“Why? What’s up?” asked Ding Dong, his giggly mood not yet dispersed.

“ _What time is it?_ ” asked Chris, though it was more of an imperative.

“Oh, hang on,” Ding Dong hummed, opening his laptop.

“It’s two-a-m, isn’t it?”

“How did you know that?” Chris demanded- and Julian shrugged.

“Wild guess. What time is it actually?”

“Oof, hold on.” Ding Dong’s laptop had another popup, but he ignored it in favor of the little clock in the toolbar. “What’s… It still says… One o’clock.”

“That’s not too-”

“P-m.”

“Of…?”

“Today? That can’t be right, though! That’s the time we…” Ding Dong looked between his human companions, becoming steadily more distraught. “…left Earth.”

“We’ve been up here twelve hours?!” Chris hollered, pulling at his beanie in panic.

“Thirteen,” Julian corrected. “At least I think so. Maybe you should do the tempura alignment.”

“The what?”

Julian prodded the laptop screen. “That pop-up? It keeps appearing, isn’t uh, temp- tempo- uh, time related?”

“Yeah,” Chris chimed in, equally curious.

“Might as well see what happens,” Ding Dong sighed, clicking the “I” option on the left of the pop-up. “This computer’s a burner anyway.”

But nothing happened. Nothing spectacular anyhow, just the time and date in the bottom left corner ticking from 1pm to 2:18am.

“Holy shit, Julian- you were right on!”

Julian didn’t seem enthused. “But that’s impossible, right? I mean, thirteen hours and we haven’ had to eat or sleep or piss?”

Chris licked his dry lips, staring emptily at the clock as it turned to 2:19. “Guys? Are we dead?”

Ding Dong gave a hollow laugh, his nublets beginning to droop. “You really think we’d end up in the same afterlife?”

“Um, _hyah?_ ” Chris huffed, and Julian threw his arms up.

“Duh! _Station!_ You remember Station!”

Ding Dong’s laugh was less restrained this time. “I thought there’d be more partying, honestly.”

“We just haven’t found the party yet,” Chris figured. “We’re still in Shitty Gamer Valhalla.”

“ _Gamer Valhalla?_ ” Julian wheezed.

“ _Shitty_ Gamer Valhalla,” Chris emphasized. “Maybe it could upgrade to Decent Gamer Valhalla if like, I dunno, anything played right.”

“You mean if there were actual _games_ instead of just like, big _rooms_ that look like games?”

“That, too.”

“Really though, that is an uncomfortably long time we’ve been gone.”

“We shouldn’t waste any more time.” Chris looked down the narrow stretch of highway. “We gotta keep moving if we’re gonna put an end to this.”

“You’re right,” sighed Ding Dong, tapping through the map. “Give me a minute to reroute us though.”

“What? Why- “

“The next level was claimed by another guild, it’s still occupied right now.”

“So? We can take em!“

“Can we?” asked Julian.

“Yeah its easy! All ya gotta do is hit ‘em! Real punches ignore armor, it’s great. “

“Well shit if it’s _that easy,_ ” said Julian, with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“Don’t believe me. Whatever, just let me _show you,_ and if I start to suck we can leave. “

“Alright."

“That’s fair.”

* * *

The moment Dan switched with Chris for the first time, Barry knew something was up. He just didn’t know what- not until they switched back. Now that he was looking for it, he wasn’t sure if this was actually Chris at all- either one of him!

He’d almost gotten used to looking at the one that had been fighting alongside the Grumps. Pale, skinny, sandy blond. But when he’d returned to Ding Dong and Julian, Barry gasped. Chris had become a few inches shorter, his lanky figure exchanged for something stockier, more muscular. His hair had become a warm brown and, perhaps strangest of all, he looked- to Barry- sillier. Younger. Happier? Oh this, this was too weird!

He took screenshots of both and added them to the growing folder of weirdness he’d collected on Chris for RubberNinja. That big zero, moments when all three members of Team Oney seemed to be talking to the air, Chris’s phone making the screen appear behind his head instead of in front, and then…

Chris’s empty, confused expression as everyone else around him screamed, the stream audio filled with the roar of the crowd and the deep voice of the announcer.

‘ _ **Let’s Players!** **Let’s give a** **W** **arm** **W** **elcome to the new Let’s Player** **C** **andidates from YouTube!** **These** **N** **ine** **V** **aliant Gamers have withstood** **I** **ncredible** **T** **ests-...’**_

And then after that, after the bloody nose and the sudden loss of consciousness- ‘ _What_ voice _?’_

 

RubberNinja was away, but Barry messaged him and Ninja Brian to meet regarding his findings. He had _something,_ but he couldn’t confirm anything, not yet. There was still more he had to check. He scrolled backward through the stream, before any of them had started their vigil. Perhaps there was a clue, back where it all began. Ninja Brian texted back immediately.

 

_Ninja Brian, RubberNinja_

_Hey guys!_

_I think I have something  
regarding the weird zero!_

_In a meeting._

_Be there in two._

And of course, Ninja Brian followed it up with a couple of knife emojis. He didn’t normally send people the knife emoji, but Samurai Barry was a special case. They had a history, after all. A thousand-year history.


	54. Cranium-less Cretins

“What do you propose?” asked Zach, throwing one leg over the other and lacing his fingers, suddenly a professional considering a business offer instead of a pastiche of a political prisoner.

“You’re right,” Brain admitted. “We’re not into these aliens dropping into the second most populated city in America with malice aforethought. And we’re into some kinky shit.”

“So I’ve heard, so I’ve heard,” Zach agreeably chimed in.

“Zach, we need as many eyes on this shit as possible. Between all the channels the aliens’ve taken over and that big pink scout ship in the middle of Glendale, our forces are spread pretty thin.” Ross explained. “Will you offer your services to the Anti- Let’s Player Resistance?”

“Oh, absolutely. On _one_ condition,” Zach replied, waggling a finger between Brian’s dragon-emblazoned top and Ross’s orange-lined hoodie. “I don’t have to wear stupid pajamas like the rest of yas.”

Brian drew his knife, but Ross raised a hand to stop him. “Brian. If that’s his _only_ condition.”

Zach offered a handshake… And Brian, with a sustained icy stare, took it.

* * *

With a pink sky above and a pink, bubbling sea below, Chris, Ding Dong, and Julian stepped out onto the cracker-land of the Luncheon Kingdom, gazing up at the polygonal blue-green mountains on the horizon and the mounds of blocky, gem-like veggies stacked all over the plaza. It smelled like salt, like warm creamy chowder and freshly sliced bell peppers.

“Oh!” Julian grinned, taking in the scenery. “S’a Mario D-doddesty.”

“ _Mario Da-dod-esty?_ ” Ding Dong repeated with unrepentant glee.

“ _Oddesty_! Odyss- _fuck_!”

“You got it,” Ding Dong giggled, patting Julian’s shoulder.

“ _Su-_ per. Mario, Odd-issee.” Julian pronounced, crossing his arms and turning up his nose.

“See? You got it!”

“ _Oh shit, there it is!_ ” Chris whispered, turning the other two around, pointing down the cliff face toward a lavular obstacle course and at the one thing that absolutely did not fit in with the rest of the delectable scenery.

It floated across the shining rock wall, thin yellow tendrils coated in green, metallic bands seemed to investigate the salty cliff face with teeny taps while the thick tube they branched from wobbled about in midair, flanked by a number of levitating silver orbs with red dots on them, twitching and lolling about like frantic eyeballs. And at the head of this creature, a round gray mass- coated in deep furrows and punctuated by a pair of tiny black spheres located to either side.

“Do you think it saw us?” asked Ding Dong, a wary arm across a starry-eyed Julian’s chest, holding him back, if only metaphorically.

“Who cares?” Chris announced, spotting an opening as the creature floated down near the piles of veggies ahead. “Watch how fast I can slap it down!”

And he was off- out of Ding Dong’s reach and already crossing the effervescent morass below, from cracker block to corncob to a springy fork in the wall, Chris’s mad dash ended in a bound that threw him to eye-level with the alien, one arm in the air. The poor thing had practically no time to react- the silver spheres spinning to point his way, a black eyeball twitching to spot his ascent, but it was already too late. Chris brought his hand down, the wrinkled gray blob deforming beneath his palm, a watery sludge spilling out across his fingers as he finished his spike. The beast fell faster than gravity, its main mass splattering against the platforms below, fluids vaporizing from the bubbling Pepto sea…

Then all evidence of its existence vanished in a flash of vibrant green.

Chris flubbed the landing, falling on his butt at the epicenter of what would have been the Splash Zone- but Ding Dong was applauding regardless, a doofy, open-mouthed grin on his awestruck mug.

Julian seemed excited for a whole different reason. “ _Dibs!_ Dibs on the next one!”

Chris scrambled to his feet, an adrenaline-punchy guffaw busting from his lips as he hopped back towards them.

“Chris, oh my god!” Ding Dong cheered. “Are you a volleyball player now? Have you been doing _sports?!_ ”

“What? No-” Chris heaved, trying to catch his breath. “Being born an ape- h-has it’s benefits- gotta say. I _have_ been workin’ out though- thanks for noticin’.”

“YES!” Julian made them both jump with his exclamation. He’d brought up a map on his bow-tie projector screen and was poking emphatically at it. Over the sides of the cliff, Green dots seemed to mingle near their own Red, Orange, and Purple. “There’s more! And they’re coming this way!”

“Oh, shit,” Chris panted. “One thing- before you guys go-! When they hit you- it doesn’t _hurt_ , but it _hurts_!”

“What?” Ding Dong’s brow creased, he squinted at Chris and his nonsense words as Julian grabbed a fist-full of his shirt and pulled him to attention.

“They’re here!”

At once, three more of the brain creatures floated over the cliff side, yellow tendrils tap-tapping the terrain as they descended into the valley- bearing green rings and silver orbs, much like the alien Chris had just dispatched, with one difference. Their heads were protected. Green masks shaped like no skull they’d ever seen sat before the frontal lobe, coming to a point and curving over the top of the hemisphere split. It would provide meager protection if the beasts chose to headbutt something, but it didn’t seem like it’d be enough coverage for much else.

Chris pulled Ding Dong back as Julian took off. “Ding Dong- the alien weapons don’t _pain-hurt_ , they _number-hurt!_ ”

Ding Dong blinked dumbly for a moment, then gasped. “ _HUD!_ ” he blurted, the little red screen of his scouter blinking to life before he hopped after Julian. He and Julian hadn’t fought other aliens yet- any info Chris had to offer was worth consideration, even if it made absolutely zero sense at face value.

Even as much as he’d been skimming the tutorials and guides, PVP combat was treated as almost trial and error, a find-out-for-yourself spoilable experience. A surprise, perhaps?


	55. HUD = Heads-Up, Dude

 

“Move aside, Ann Watson,” bragged Ryan, modeling his new duds. “Ryan’s got a new sugar mommy.”

“Ryan!” Matt objected, interrupting his own Insta selfie spree to throw a glare Ryan’s way.

“What? These boots are Gucci, Dude! Your mom could never.”

“Well, wait til she hears you only want her for her money!”

“What?! You’re not-! You wouldn’t snitch on your old buddy Ryan-”

“I would! She’s gonna be so disappointed in you!”

Zexpectrika thrummed pleasantly, half her eyes engaged in watching the playful screaming match, the other half keeping a wary view of Ethan as he zipped around the pyramid with his new grappling hook, making it sound like a marvelous time.

“That’s sexual harassment, Ryan!”

And of course Ryan was testing out his new abilities, too, sending himself into hyper-time to pants Matt, shove him, and get on his hands and knees behind him- tripping Matt over his back and sending him falling to the bed with a shriek of panic, though it was quickly drowned out by Ryan’s giddy laughter.

“Ryan!!” Matt yelped, pulling his jeans back into place over his unintentional podcast product placement.

“Woo! You guys are missing out!” Ethan called, his grappling hook catching a grip on one of the marble columns nearby and yoinking him through the air their way. He braced himself against it to catch his breath, grinning down at the pair. “What ‘r ya’ lying’ around for, Matt? Aren’t you gunna play with your noo bazooka?”

“You know what, Ethan? You’re right.”

“What are you gonna do?” Ryan sassed, “Drop me waist-deep in a hole?”

Matt tugged the green barrel over his shoulder, balanced it against his knees and leveled it at Ryan, neglecting to hesitate.

_PFOONT!_

It wasn’t a pitfall seed but a giant peach that launched from the tube and smacked Ryan in the face.

“OW- What the _fuck,_  dude?!”

_PFOONT!_

“ _OOF! Jesus...”_ An apple hit Ryan in the gut and knocked the wind out of him, dropping him to his knees.

“That’s what you get!” Matt replied.

“ _That fucking hurt, Asshole!_ ” Ryan wheezed back, doubled over in pain. Matt rolled his eyes, picking up the peach from where it had landed.

“Why fruit?” he asked, holding it up for Zex to see.

“A **healing item.** _For your ailing teammate?_ ”

“Oh, nice.”

“Yeah, _healing,_ ” Ryan grunted. “ _Feels so good._ ”

“It’s a _fruit_ , Ryan- you have to _eat_ it,” sighed Matt, rolling the peach back Ryan’s way. He watched intently as Ryan uncurled, giving Matt a pouty glare as he grasped the fruit and brought it to his face.

The moment it touched his mouth, it disappeared into a cloud of red plus-symbols that dissipated across his new clothes. A splash of color returned to Ryan’s face and he sat up, still glowering at Matt.

“Feel better?” Matt asked, as coy as he was genuinely curious.

“Yeah, just great actually,” Ryan huffed, sliding off the bed to stretch. Matt watched him go, bumping an elbow against Zexpectrika’s orb and offering a loose, limp-wristed gesture.

“Hey, is health like, a thing we can look at? Like a UI? Like a heads-up?”

Zex’s eyes turned Matt’s way- one of them deviating to watch Ethan rappel down the column. “ **HUD?** ”

“Hud?” Matt blankly parroted, and his glasses flickered to life, a collection of bars and numbers he wasn’t sure the purpose of overlaid his vision. The words _The Pyramid_ faded in and out of the center of his view, and a long red bar appeared, underlining Zexpectrika’s name. Then, turning to Ryan, Matt saw much the same, a blue bar with _ALG Elirymagee_ above it, and a number to the right- _78%._  The bar was incomplete, a decent chunk missing from the right side, leaving the appearance of a half-empty tincture, or a stuck loading screen. “Oh wow, the fruit didn’t do much, huh.”

Ryan turned to him with a wicked grin and replied: “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Matt!”

Matt gawped, scandalized- but Ethan began laughing uproariously, leaving Matt unable to quip back and Ryan’s smug face to smirk at him until it waned.

“Well, I guess I walked right into that one, Ryan. Congratulations.”

Ryan opened his mouth to sass again- _PFOONT!_ -but Matt didn’t give him the chance.

Ethan cracked up again as Matt watched intently- the fruit (an orange this time) spiked Ryan right in the mouth, kicking a solid 4% off the bar before it evaporated into the healing red symbols and Ryan’s health popped up to 84%, a full ten points up from the reduced count.

“MATT!” Ryan roared, but Matt was unperturbed.

“What? You had something on your face.”

Ryan snatched the apple up from the where it had rolled and raised it over his head, two-handed, dodgeball style.

“Ryan- _Ryan wait I’m allergic to apples, remember?!_ ” Matt yelped, curling in on himself in an effort to protect his vitals. Ryan laughed, lowering it to his chest.

“You fucker, you really thought I was gonna throw it?”

“You _were!_ ”

“Like I would stoop to your level with a cheap shot like that! Come on, _Matt-_ ” he faked another pitch and Matt flinched hard, almost kneeing himself in the face. Ryan laughed again and bit the apple, causing it to disappear and bump his health up to 94%. “Ya big baby.”

Matt scowled, pushing himself to his feet against Zexpectrika’s arm and nearly stumbling as another raised to assist.

“Well, this has been fun,” he sighed, turning to Zex. “But we really oughta get back to work. Zexpectrika, can you send us back to where we were?”

“Where we _were?_ ” Ethan piped. “Why don’t you take us to where the Game Grumps or the uh- The Oney Cronies are? We’re gonna be way behind!”

“Hell, just have her take us straight to the end!” said Ryan. “Make everybody catch up to us for once!”

“That one!” chirped Ethan, turning to Zex with bedroom eyes but no change to his goober voice. “Can you _take us there,_ Zexy?”

“ **The end?** ” Zex stated more than asked. A strange, stony look took over her eyes. “I don’t think you _know what you’re asking._ ”

“The- the end, you know-” Ethan gestured vaguely, not sure where to point. He looked to the other two. “The uh, the goal? Um.”

“My sweet **Guild Babies.** I know your **G** **oal.** ”

Zexpectrika ruffled Matt’s hair, straightened Ryan’s vest, and pinched Ethan’s cheek.

“I know your **Goal** , _but I dare not speak it._ If **the CollectiCon** finds out, _well._ There’s **no Recovery Node** on this ship that can save you.”

“What?” Matt weakly muttered, nervous. “The- _the CollectiCon?_ ”

“Matt.” Ryan put a hand on his shoulder, eyes wide. “BigKush- the Collective Consciousness?”

“ _Of course you’d remember the weed name,_ ” Matt smirked, then frowned in thought. “But they already have full access to all our brains, don’t they? They already know!”

“So they’re just humoring us, then.”

“But does that mean…” Ethan murmured. “Any time we die, we might not come back?”

“We’ve died so many times, though!” Ryan complained. “If they haven’t killed us for real yet, what’s stopping them?”

“Maybe they don’t think we’re a threat?” Matt mused. “We’re always getting left behind, we’re _bad_ at this! They don’t think we stand a chance.”

“But the Game Grumps...”

“Oh fuck,” Ethan yelped. “Oh fuck! We gotta warn them!”


	56. T-T-T-Telephone

“MATT, HEY! WHAT’S GOING ON?”

“ _Arin, hey, we have a problem._ ”

_VRRM, VRRRRMMM._

“WHAT’S THAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE KART ENGINE!”

“ _Arin! They’re on to us, dude!_ ”

“RYAN?”

“ _The CollectiCon knows our plan! Any death could be permanent!_ ”

“THE WHAT? THE DECEPTICONS?”

“ _Don’t die, Arin!_ ”

“WHAT? THE RACE IS ABOUT TO START!”

Beep.

Beep.

“ _ARIN! If you die in the game you die for real!_ ”

Beep.

_BEEEEEEEP!_

“OH FUCK! I’LL CALL YOU BACK!”

 

They were off- Arin, Dan, and Suzy against five absurdly gross biological car people- grubby little insectoid limbs cleaning compound headlight eyes, clear window-wings fluttering and buzzing in time with the boosts on the road surface. It was a lovely beach, or it would have been, if they could pay attention to it. In sixth and fifth place, Suzy pulled up alongside Arin and had to shout over the motors of their cars.

“What was that about?!” she called, smashing through an item box as Arin took a ramp. Suzy used the mushroom she received to make up for Arin’s speed boost and Arin glanced at her, afraid to look away from the road for too long.

“We might be fucked!” he shouted back. “Somebody knows about the plan to blow this pop stand!”

“How?!”

“I don’t know! But we can’t die anymore! It might be permanent!”

“Fuck!” Suzy called back. “We’ve got to tell Dan!”

Arin scanned the track, but he couldn’t catch a glimpse of Danny’s pale blue car or cape. “I don’t see him!”

Suzy yelped, dodging a banana peel, her two left wheels digging into the deep sand along the side of the road, slowing her down until she pulled back into the lane. “ _Eek!_ Well if you see him, tell him!”

Arin slowed to meet her at the turn, giving her another nervous glance.

“And drive safe, okay? I’m not losing you to a stupid video game!”

Arin gave her a smile and a singular confident nod.

Satisfied, Suzy nodded back and turned her eyes to the road. It wouldn’t do them much good for her to lose track now. This was a competition after all, and if it worked at all like the real thing, at least one of them had to qualify to move on. She separated from Arin as they climbed a hill and crossed a bridge, bumping sharply into one of the bugs. It complained with cicada-like chatter, questionable tires wobbling on the log bridge. Suzy brightened. So there were exceptions to the hard light weapon rules!

This time, Suzy swerved hard into the side of the bug, throwing it off the bridge and into the approaching cliff side. She didn’t have time to see where it landed, and a glance in her side mirror showed nothing- no flash of light, but no critter in a cloud with a fishing line either. She made a mental note of the pitfall danger, the dirt road she crossed the bridge to becoming a tight spiral down the hill and through another line of item boxes.

Meanwhile, Arin was starting to get nervous. He couldn’t tell what place he was in anymore, he couldn’t see Suzy or Dan, and he’d just launched into what he hoped was a shortcut and not a Long Death Tunnel to Nowhere. He glanced down at the steering wheel, the pink light-made plastic under his sweating palms reflecting nothing of his status in his standings. He huffed, grunting aloud to himself. “Where’s the fucking HUD?”

Suddenly, a flash of pink in the dim cavern nearly blinded Arin, causing him to slam on the brakes and pull the wheel into a hard left turn- and the end of the tunnel arrived, blinding him once again he launched out into the faux daylight and landed on the track, his accidental drift lining him up for a perfect boost into a narrow straightaway, sending him rocketing past Danny into second place-

-which he could now tell thanks to the handy little pink light screen projected in front of his eyes from his tiara!

A “2nd” floated at the top of the screen, a map showing his pink dot and Danny’s blue practically on top of each other, nearing the end of the track and speeding into Lap 2 of 3. He glanced over his shoulder at Dan, just long enough to see that while the older man was laughing he was also _eagerly_ flipping Arin the bird. That nearly sparked a giggle in Arin, himself, but an eye on the map revealed a curve ahead and he instead returned to looking at the road.

Second became Third, became Second as an approaching bug car swerved between them- and was struck by a tailing red shell, which flipped it and sent it rolling, barely bouncing over Arin and Dan’s heads before it impacted the ground once more and disappeared in a blue flash. Having both turned to watch it, Arin and Dan looked to each other, Dan’s silent, horrified eyes met Arin’s and Arin nodded his way, sure that Dan understood the danger, even if Arin hadn’t quite passed on the message.

* * *

Julian Marcel loved brains.

The seat of consciousness, the residence of the soul, the source of all art, poetry, creative expression. Chemical reactions and electrical signals. Every blessing and every curse.

And they looked cool and they probably felt squishy and neat.

Alas, humanity’s greatest taboo- having evolutionarily hidden the glorious organ behind a shield never meant to be penetrated except in the most dire of circumstances, the human desire to touch mingled with the human revulsion towards organs never intended to be exposed and Julian was left wanting.

But no longer! A unique opportunity had presented itself with these aliens- levitating nervous systems with an almost unprotected brain at the helm- already demonstrated by Chris to be exactly as tangible as imagined.

Beady red eyes on silver orbs tracked his movements a she approached, growing brighter with a warning hum. Julian grinned, his poltergust vacuum summoning a vortex that drew the orbs of the nearest alien right towards him like a magnet- then swung the hose grip wide, slinging the spheres into the vibrant pink lava below and leaving Brain Number One defenseless. Switching the vacuum into reverse, a splash of pink pain made the aliens recoil and separate, pulling their green-banded nerve tentacles up and away from the ground, pitching sharply to one side or the other to escape.

“Julian!”

Next platform, next platform. Brain Number Two’s silver spheres revealed their true nature- a single red beam of pure heat burst from each one, blasting the salty block and separating Julian from Ding Dong with a wall of fire.

“What?” he called back.

“Don’t get hit!”

“ _Duh!_ ”

Ding Dong rolled his eyes. “I’ll explain later, just don’t get hit!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Julian waved him off, and Ding Dong stuck his tongue out in response, the two taking off toward separate opponents. “Don’t get hit, whatever!”

_Meanwhile, Julian was going to get his hands on that brain._


	57. A Piss-Poor First Impression

It wasn’t easy to give a tour in silence, but there wasn’t really much to show. Ross simply led Zach down the row of computers, watching him curiously inspect each screen- and each costumed character manning each station. He didn’t seem to recognize any, looking to Jackieboy Man and Diddle Kid with equal disdain.

“ _Soooo_ what in the world are you all doing, anyway?” Zach finally asked, leaning between Dr. Iplier and The Narrator (who didn’t seem like he was _capable_ of looking at his screen in the first place).

“ **The intruder leaned in curiously, his presence signaled by** _ **oppressive**_ **mouth-breathing and an insulting inquiry,** ” boomed The Narrator. “ **Regardless of the answer, he would come to be** _ **…very…**_ **disappointed.** ”

“Ah, yes! Mr. Hadel!” greeted Dr. Iplier, and Zach was already scowling, trying to ignore the pair of them in favor of the alter-ego on the monitor- “I’m afraid you’ve caught me outside my office hours! But I’m quite sure I have your file somewhere around here-…”

They were too difficult to ignore, and Zach stepped back to give Ross a disgruntled glance. Ross could only stare back, the pair of them moving down the line for answers, stopping between Matt Watson and Ryan Magee of SuperMega, who were both watching _themselves_ on the stream. Zach squinted.

“How are you two-”

“It’s a long story.” They spoke in unison, barely acknowledging his presence. He looked at their notes- both were writing left-handed, and backwards? No, _mirrored_. Zach couldn’t read Matt’s at a glance, but Ryan’s clearly read a series of time codes and _‘death’ ‘death’ ‘death’_. On screen, what was more than likely to be the original Matt and Ryan appeared to be cozying up to the boss of somebody’s vaporwave-inspired Unity project- _an alien_ \- and that sparked something in Zach.

He pulled away from the two, marching the rest of the way down the line with Ross close behind.

“Hello stranger!” greeted a figure in yellow spandex with a giant orange cone on his head. Dr. Sung held out a hand for shaking, his usual cheery grin unperturbed by Zach’s demeanor.

“ _Yeah, hi,_ ” snapped Zach, uncharacteristically terse. “Can you direct me to the person in charge, please? _I have a complaint._ ”

Sung didn’t waver, instead stepping aside and directing the un-costumed toward the end of the row where Commander Meouch was pacing.

“What now?” Meouch growled, looking their way- his eyes widening at the sight of Zach, pupils shrinking to narrow slits. “Is that a fucking _human?_ ”

“Is that a fucking _furry?_ ” asked Zach in response, turning to Ross. “What is this Mickey Mouse operation?”

Ross’s eyes were wide, his arm reaching back over his shoulder for the ninjato concealed there- a deep, rumbling growl emanating from Meouch as Sung let out a panicked cry-

“ _Don’t turn your back on the Commander!!_ ”

 

It was over before Zach could turn around, steel clanking between sharp teeth, yellow spandex arms wrapped around a maned neck in a tight choke hold.

“ _Jesus Christ, it’s a Lion!_ ” Zach screeched. “You have an _actual fucking lion?!_ ”

“I tried to warn you-” Sung gasped, bending backwards in an attempt to keep Meouch’s jaws out of Zach’s face. “His favorite food is _human!_ ”

Ross glanced over his shoulder at Zach, his arms shaking as he held his blade in the big cat’s teeth. He flicked his head sharply, a signal for Zach to book it, but the other animator didn’t heed his warning.

“You have a _lion,_ what the _fuck_ is going on in here?!”

Meouch let go of Ross’s sword and bellowed a deep roar, drawing frightened looks from the surrounding agents. Barry and Brian leaned out from the other side of the computer bank, Brian’s disgruntled blue-eyed glare contrasting with Barry’s concern, which turned to casual recognition on spotting Zach.

“Oh, hey Zach!” Seven heads turned his way- Zach, Ross, Brian, Meouch, Sung, Phobos, and Havve (who had hidden behind their desk chair and gotten up to join the wrestling match, respectively). “It’s me, Barry! Barry Kramer?”

“ _What?_ ” Zach glanced nervously up to Meouch and Sung, then back to Barry.

“Oh yeah, we’ve been gathering intel about the aliens from watching all their livestreams. Tryin’ to find weaknesses. Where’s your costume?”

“Oh my god,” Zach interrupted. “All of you are just sitting around on your fat asses staring at computer screens?! Didn’t you get enough of that before _aliens fucking invaded?!_ ”

Meouch snarled and Zach snarled back.

“You heard me! We can’t be down here _gleefully tossing salad_  while they’re _up there_ having _masturbatory daydreams_ about _dunking our planet in an industrial shredder!_ ”

Barry cleared his throat. He seemed like the only one who could actually talk back.

“Well uh, we don’t really have any hard evidence about what their intentions are. Maybe they really just want to… game with us?”

Zach’s jaw hung open, staring at Barry in disbelief. “They’ve already killed people, Kramer! They didn’t exactly land in the middle of nowhere! How many people do you think were in that building? How many lives?!”

“Um.” Barry scratched at his beard. “Well, you definitely have a point, I’ll give you that much.”

“Havve,” Sung whispered, not as quietly as he’d like due to his efforts at restraining the ex-space-pirate. “Little help?”

Havve Hogan slowly shook his head.

“ _Of course I ‘got it,’_ but I’d ‘got it’ _better_ if even _helped_ you did me! _Thanks!_ ”

Zach rounded on them with an undignified shriek. “What _planet_ are you _from?!_ ”

Sung and Meouch looked at each other then. Meouch nodded toward Zach, and Sung frowned, shaking his head. Meouch rolled his eyes.

“ _Look, Pipsqueak._ I know you’re pissed, and if you want to go out there and get yourself gunned down by _both_ the aliens _and_ the United States _military_ , then you’re more than welcome. But _we’re_ gonna sit here and look for our opening to save your _shitty little planet_ whether you like it or not! So take your pick- but if you’re not _with_ us, you’re _against_ us.”

Zach gave the whole of the six-foot cat an appraising look, taking a step back towards Ross. “ _Fine_. I know when I’m not wanted. …But seriously, you look like some kind of teleporter accident, what the fuck happ-”

Meouch _roared_.

“ _Okay!_ Whatever! _I’m out!_ ” Zach threw his hands up and backed out, all eyes watching him (and Ross, who hastily retreated behind him) as he left the chamber and slipped out into the hall.


	58. Innocent Red-Blue Betrayal

“Alright, how far back did we get set?” asked Ryan, stepping out on the thick blue-green grass.

Matt groaned, opening the map in his glasses. “Fuuuck, Ryan. We’re gonna have to haul ass to catch up to anybody!”

“I’m on it!” Ethan announced, grappling away and leaving Matt and Ryan to skulk after him. It wasn’t that he didn’t like spending time with them, he was still a huge fan! But they were in a bit of a mood after their tiff at The Pyramid, and as sure as he was that they’d work it out, Ethan perched himself a the peak of a hill, gave a cursory glance around, and sent Mark another guild invite.

 

Hey Mark.

I know you’re still alive  
cuz you’re still tweeting  
out all that stuff about how  
great and fun this place is.

Can you join up and text  
me back, please?

Tyler didn’t say it but he  
was really worried when  
I left.

You oughta text him too.  
U know, while you’re texting  
people.

Miss you!

 

Ethan pouted at his phone and put it back into his pocket. So SuperMega was salty and Markiplier was MIA. Ethan flicked on his headphones and jacked into the CrankGameplays stream.

“ _What is up, my Cranky Crew!_ It’s Ethan. I wanted to say sorry for tuning out for so long! So far my first collab with SuperMega has been going _nnnnot so goooood…_ ”

 

“You wanna say something?” Ryan demanded, catching Matt looking at him for the fourth time.

“What? No!” Matt immediately denied, snapping back to face the path they trudged. But he couldn’t keep quiet about it now that he knew for sure. “Your health meter keeps dropping.”

“What, your stupid nerd glasses tell you that?”

“ _Yes,_ my stupid nerd glasses told me that, _Ryan!_ …Why are you so mad at me, dude? I thought we were doing okay for once.”

“Me too! But one minute we’re falling asleep watching The Iron Giant and the next all my organs are failing and you’re shooting me in the face with assorted fruits!”

“Well for fairness’ sake you insulted my mom and pulled my pants down in front of a fourth-dimensional box goddess!”

“What does she care! She’s a fucking space computer covered in eyeballs!”

“I was still embarrassed, dipshit! All those eyeballs almost saw _my_ balls!”

Ryan laughed. “Dude!”

Matt was smiling now, too. “It’s not funny!”

“Dude, Matt,” Ryan wheezed. “She was naked _the whole time_ and you’re worried about your dick?”

Matt cracked. “She was probably wondering where _our_ fifth arms were, huh?”

Ryan slapped Matt’s shoulder, his laugh abruptly turning into a nasty, rattling cough.

Matt’s smile stalled. Ryan did this often enough- a joke mainly, building on an unfortunate habit he’d developed, having been a smoker since the age of eighteen. Now though, Ryan had a fistful of his jacket and was dragging him down in an effort to support himself, hunched over and hacking. Matt slapped his back, turning to him with wide eyes as his glasses recalculated.

“Dude, cut it out!”

“Can’t-” Ryan gasped sharply, leaning away from Matt to retch. “ _Lun-_ ‘t’s in my _lungs-!_ ”

Matt tried to pull away, slipping the Bazookatamari off his back. “Ryan hang on, hold still!”

“Wh- _no!_ Do- _hon’t-!_ ”

“It’ll hurt for _one second,_ dude, just let me heal you!”

Ryan let go and staggered a few steps away, the look of betrayal on his bearded mug not entirely unwarranted as Matt hefted the weapon over his shoulder and drew a bead on his best friend.

_PFOONT! Splat!_

Ryan traveled through time, dodging the oversized cartoon pear that Matt launched, causing it to splatter against the rock wall behind the space Ryan used to fill.

“Ryan! You wasted it!” Matt accused, but Ryan was nowhere to be seen. “Ryan?”

Matt looked around the sunny, mountainous landscape, alone. Unnerved, he picked up the remains of the fruit, which had consolidated conveniently into slices, and started walking.

“Ryan?”

* * *

They were back on the beach now, and Dan was pulling ahead again- _it would have been nice to know if their karts had different stats at the beginning of the race_ \- and Arin was looking at the map again, trying to find the bug in first, or maybe spot the shortcut he’d taken last lap.

“Oh fuck!” He’d taken his eyes off the road too long and a wiggle in the track ahead sent him driving straight off the road and into the bushes, sharp leaves cutting at his face and arms as he tried to swerve back into the race.

Second. Third. Fourth. Arin cursed up a storm, finally taking off again as Suzy passed by- leaving Arin in Fifth place… Out of five? On the HUD leaderboard, three of the bugs weren’t in the race any longer and as Arin tailed Suzy he began to feel he knew why. Across the bridge and down the corkscrew, Suzy was dodging item boxes, aggressively flicking her head to look back at Arin and urge him on. Arin understood at once, hitting one of the boxes she’d dodged and collecting a Starman. Suzy _had something,_ and to use it she needed him out of the way.

Lap three of three.

Arin held his breath as they approached the next row of item boxes. He prayed to the Nintendo gods as he smashed the Starman, enveloping his pink car in a shimmering rainbow and blasting him through the item box, past Suzy and one of the last bugs, and well into the gap between second and third- and the item randomizer resolved itself, blinking a large object into existence over Arin’s lap.

A bright blue shell, with big white wings. Yes.

Arin glanced down at the map, the other bug was still in first- _Yes!-_ he drifted through a curve into the final straightaway- he could see them as the Starman wore off and the drift boost took over- _YES!!-_ he threw the blue shell out of the car and watched it zip towards the finish line…

 

_Right as Dan took first._


	59. The Strange Case of Dr. Chris O'Neill and Mr. Chris O'Neill

Julian slipped behind Brain Number Three, or as close to ‘behind’ as he could tell.

“Unequip,” he mumbled aloud, the vacuum on his back disappearing, replaced by little purple wings- a green chameleon clambered down his left arm and wrapped itself around his hand. He readied it, hopping up a ledge or two along the cliffside and dodging another volley of lasers. There seemed to be an obvious delay between the turret’s aiming and firing- and for that Julian was thankful, because Chris and Ding Dong had taken to throwing random crap off the ground at their respective targets like fucking cavemen. At least Chris’s shortsword had impaled one of the orbs of Brain Number Two and brought it down, thought Julian had to wonder why he hadn’t just speared the brain itself! He shook his head, turning back to his own fight- one- two- three- four red pikmin popped out of the lizard’s mouth, one- two- three- four impacts, each pikmin grasping a turret and pulling it toward the ground.

An angry buzz drew Julian’s eye and aim back up to the brain- which ducked aside, revealing a fully-charged fifth turret.

“Oh, fuck.” Julian took wing only fast enough to avoid being hit in the head, the laser blast lancing through his middle instead, just below his ribcage. Recoiling hard enough to take himself out of the air, Julian hit the cliff face and fell, slipping behind a pile of colorful stones and hiding beneath a fan of radish leaves. He backed up until he was flat against the wall, arms wrapped tightly around himself, his mind racing- was he in shock? Or had everything been cauterized, like a light saber, like Star Wars? Was it going to start hurting? Was he going to die? Was he already dead and just didn’t know it yet?

He had to look. He _had_ to look! He couldn’t look.

Damn. He hadn’t expected to be touching _his own_ exposed organs today.

* * *

Safely beyond the air lock, Ross tore off his hood and mask.

“What the _fuck_ was that, Zach?!”

“Why are you asking _me?_ Your halfwitted resistance is doing _fucking nothing-!_ ”

“They’re working really hard, Zach! Maybe you can’t see it right now, but what they’re doing is _super fucking important!_ We need to know what we’re getting into so we don’t jump in _blind_ and _blow it for everybody else!_ ”

“I’ll tell you what you can blow, Ross!” Zach growled, grabbing a fistful of Ross’s collar. “I wanted to join you shitheads because I thought you were doing _something._ And if you can’t find something for me to do, _I’ll find it myself._ ”

Zach roughly let go, turning down the long hallway to the bridge and starting to walk.

“Zach,” called Ross, but Zach didn’t stop. “Zach! I’ve got your stupid suicide mission, okay? I just need more time!”

“Best get on it, O’Donovan!” Zach replied, echoing down the hallway. “You’re asking for the one thing we don’t have!”

* * *

“Right, so like I was saying,” Barry continued, unruffled by the proceedings. “I rolled it all the way back to when Chris got that tracer thing in his neck they all have. This alien, _I think,_ proves my theory. See how it transforms to look just like Chris? But it looks like _this_ Chris.”

Barry pulled up the screenshots he’d taken. One skinny, scruffy Chris and one short, scrappy Chris.

“And not _this_ Chris. Nobody else has this two-image issue- not even Danny when they switched! Which, on top of all the other evidence, leads me to believe these aliens are the mind riders, and _they can’t read Chris!_ ”

Barry grinned up at Brian, who stared back. His left eye twitched, unsatisfied. Barry gave a hearty laugh and turned back to the computer.

“Ninja Brian, _you_ know Chris has played video games. _I_ know Chris has played video games. But here his brain scan game play number is zero. He looks vastly different between Arin n’ Suzy and Ding Dong n’ Julian because the aliens can’t take _his self-image_ into account for consistency! And honestly, I think the most damning piece of evidence is what _isn’t_ here, what you _can’t_ see!”

Barry opened a folder inside the evidence folder and made the icons large so Brian could see them all at once. There were tons of pictures, pictures of Ding Dong and Julian, or just Ding Dong, or just Julian. One of Ding Dong, alone, talking to the air. One of Julian with a crowd of pikmin looking confused. And… One of Arin and Suzy, the pair watching the plant pod dangling above them, a blurry keyblade captured just before impact.

“Whenever Chris goes off by himself, _anywhere_ the others can’t see, he just… Disappears! The cameras don’t even look at him- or if the footage exists, it’s not being broadcast to Earth. They have no idea where he is or what he’s doing when nobody else is actively looking at him. Chris. Is. _Clean._ ”

Brian inspected the screenshots, and Barry received the only affiliative gesture he believed Brian had ever given while wearing the mask. Brian slapped his shoulder once, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Barry barked out another laugh, a rush of pride at a job well done- well, mostly done. Now he just had to convince Meouch of the same. And congratulate RubberNinja on his attention to detail. And give Chris a call!

* * *

Ross cursed under his breath and yanked his phone out of his pocket, dialing Brian.

“ _Ross._ ”

“I fucked up, Brian. Zach doesn’t like our operation-”

“ _Fuck him._ ”

Ross’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Brian, you don’t understand. If we let him go, he could ruin _everything_. He’s a loose cannon, and he’s got something nobody else on this ship does. If we don’t take advantage of that, it could be difference between saving the world or the alien apocalypse.”

“ _That’s some argument._ ” Brian didn’t sound impressed. “ _What do you suggest?_ ”

Ross shook his head. “We gotta move forward with the scout ship. That’s all we’ve got that could possibly keep his interest.”

“ _You seem convinced. Very well. I’ll allow it._ ”

Ross sighed in relief, turning to look at a still-walking Zach, but Brian continued.

“ _But so you’re informed, this is your responsibility. If he blows up, it’s on you. Are we clear?_ ”

“Crystal.”

“ _And you’re going to have to tell me all about this ‘something’ he has. I can’t wait to hear what it is._ ”


	60. Past Watson and Dyin' Magee

Ryan threw up.

It was a long time coming, but it was no relief. His lungs, his esophagus, his throat burned- everything burned, including the evidence. The lava pool he knelt beside seemed to erase the fluids he didn’t care to identify. It was probably more blood and bile than anything, he hadn’t quite gotten around to breakfast before he and Matt were desperately rushing to escape his apartment. Ryan leaned against the rocky blue wall, pressing a hand to his chest, just below the moobs where he could still feel the throbbing pain of the spreading bruise deep under his skin.

Of course it would be his luck to get the one busted Recovery Node of the group! Every time he healed it was as if the injury was new- sharp, stabbing pain followed by an acid reflux burn, nausea, heat- then cold, colder as it went on, the pain fading, and by then it was too late- out of energy, out of time, lying on his back feeling the life drain out of him, staring up at Matt’s eyes.

...Matt’s eyes. Ryan winced at the memory, briefly wondering if this was some dying dream his frozen brain concocted out of guilt from those eyes. And if it was, then…

Even if neither of them wanted to, they would have to talk about what happened soon. Matt had defeated the Let’s Player Trials _alone_. Matt _Watson_. Matt “ _Weaboo_ ” Watson, featherweight Christian twink from _good ol’ South Carolina-_ with nothing but _molotov cocktails and a quick wit!_

He wasn’t looking forward to it… Then again, Ryan didn’t have to ask- he could see it for himself, couldn’t he? They were still being streamed, after all. Maybe he could just roll it back and look?

Ryan woke his watch, pulling up a light screen and navigating to the still-running SuperMega steam where real-time Matt jogged through the mountain tunnels somewhere above. He began to rewind. At least this educational romp would fill the time between now and when Matt found him. Or when he got sick enough that he had to seek Matt out, whichever came first.

* * *

Matt scrubbed at his unprotected eyes, knelt by the void in the grass where the last flickers of blue static faded away. The surrounding field of the pikmin stood idle, pale, glowing leaves shivering in the wind. He stayed a fair few minutes, hands clasped in front of his face, head bowed. With a deep sigh, he stood, pulling his cracked phone out of his pocket and texted someone, made a call, teary eyes, shaking hands. Then, each hand had a green bottle in it, white cloths ensconced in flame, and they stopped shaking altogether.

They’d made it to level eight, something Grand Theft Auto-based, and to find the exit portal Matt quickly resorted to arson. He left the park they’d stopped in and crossed the boulevard, flinging a bottle at the nearest building with a mission marker in front of it. And the next, and the next. A police car sped by, sirens wailing, but Matt was unperturbed, his vengeance quest going unobstructed until finally the exit portal appeared, in the place of a mission marker.

As Matt stepped through it, back in the lava cave Ryan winced. He gave a sympathetic “Oof,” though, strangely, Matt didn’t seem to register his surroundings. He ignored the giant purple orb next to him, the giant dominoes, the thumbtacks, the paperclips. He climbed down from a massive table, down the blanket of the kotatsu, across the floor covered in game pieces, cassette tapes, batteries, ants, to a massive shoji door- that he promptly set on fire. The wood and paper went up in seconds, leading Matt out into a massive garden, where polygonal, almost mechanical birds and animals and giants flapped and scampered and golfed, the exit portal appearing in the hole where the giant was sinking putts, as if the game itself was begging him not to set any more fires.

Matt arrived at The Boss. It was familiar- though something they’d never actually battled on SuperMega. The final boss that they’d seen in the intro cutscene of Ty, the Tasmanian Tiger, Boss Cass, in his weird giant football player robot. Well, it wasn’t _actually_ a football player, it just looked like one because of the giant shoulder armor, but that was a weird distinction to make. It wasn’t as big as it should have been, but Ryan wasn’t complaining- especially since something was different about this, compared to the levels Matt had just blown through. The boss seemed resistant to fire. Matt threw molotov after molotov, setting the mech ablaze and watching in frustration as it extinguished itself again and again. Matt got angrier and angrier, missing his throws, starting to fling rocks and wooden crates his way, screaming, crying, heavy tears mixing with the blood of a scraped cheek. Matt tilted until finally, finally, the machine fell. And Matt stood, setting the machine aflame and watching it burn out, again and again. Even as the exit portal waited behind him. Even as, Ryan knew, Ryan himself was waiting on the other side.

* * *

The screen fell away as Ryan’s hand slipped off his knee, his vision hazy and his limbs heavy as he leaned hard against the wall and tried to push himself to his feet. He’d waited too long. Normally he’d be cold by now, but it seemed sitting next to a pool of magma offset that particular cue. He shuffled to the edge of the pit, realizing as his eyes trailed upward across the stepping stones to the opposite cliff, up to the vent tunnel that was his planed escape that he’d expected to be able to jump- or at least climb his way out of the cavern.

“ _Fuuuuck,_ ” he groaned, turning what should have been a hop to the next platform into more of an oversized step. Where was Matt? Ryan was sure he hadn’t strayed too far from the main path- though if another route did exist, it would be his luck that Matt and Ethan had taken it. And speaking of his luck, the next stepping stone turned out not to be a stone at all! A mechanical whir and a pink, metallic head rose from the magma, barfing up a fireball that thankfully sailed overhead as Ryan dropped to a knee and pulled his new revolver from its invisible holster at his hip.

_Bang! Bang!_

His first two shots missed, whether due to the lag in his head or the heat waves coming off the magma, disguising the dinosaur’s position in a mirage as it rocked side to side like a cobra about to strike. He couldn’t aim- couldn’t keep his hands steady- couldn’t lead the target-

_BOOM!_

Didn’t have to.

“Ryan!”

As the joints composing the dino’s vertebrae uncoupled and fell away, Ryan squinted up into the darkness. It was Ethan, dangling from the stalactite-encrusted ceiling like an overall-wearing Spiderman with a gun. And Ryan would have been happy to see him if he wasn’t already zipping back into the vent, his calls of “ _Matt! Matt, he’s here!_ ” echoing through the cavern. It looked like Ryan was going to have to face the music though the ledge ahead looked higher and higher as he took one wobbling step after another, a half-hearted skip from one rock to the next and then…

He’d made a jump like this before, back when he and Matt had aced the tutorial. He hadn’t thought he could make it then, either, Matt leaning back over the side, offering him a hand up and an encouraging half-mouthed smile. But now his shoulders slumped, gazing up at a ledge that seemed to sway far above his head. He kicked off the stone and stretched, discovering how badly he’d undershot as the cliff's edge rushed past his face to meet his fingertips- it was instinct to latch on- just as it was instinct to scream as the rest of his body swung into the wall, a lance of fresh pain piercing his chest and radiating out through every nerve.

Ryan saw white, but as the pain began to recede he felt the rough volcanic rock wall against his face, the ledge beneath his straining fingertips, and the wide, rounded shapes digging into his sides, easing the weight from his arms, leaning him away from the wall, lifting him up and over. He opened his eyes and found himself bathed in oceanic blue, at first sure that he’d died and respawned already, but the pain was dulling and the two enormous blue spotlights pouring down on him were familiar, but nothing like the ones in the Breakroom or the TPK room…

“Ryan?” Matt? The lights dimmed and the room came into focus, the warm browns and reds of before were replaced by cool grays and those blue eyes- in a familiar giant face.

Ryan’s eyes widened in recognition and he gasped, pushing himself up- but falling back again as his arms gave out, landing in the wide palm of The Iron Giant.

“Ryan!” The giant’s eyes closed, and it seemed to bow its head as Matt appeared, jogging up to him.

“ _What-_ ” Ryan gasped, his ragged breathing picking up as Matt arrived, the taste of blood on his tongue as his eyes darted between the sleeping giant and a strangely pleased-looking Matt. “ _Juh- Giant?_ ”

“I know, right?” Matt pushed Ryan’s hat off his forehead, brushing loose wisps of his dark hair out of his face. “That’s not the only surprise I’ve got for you, Big Boy!”


	61. Leigh Daniel Avian

Arin’s heart dropped. A wave of sand and dust disguised the scene ahead as he drove into it, barely able to see the screen in front of his face and the strange flickering, shifting alien letters following the readout for ‘1st place’. Arin felt sick. He needed to pull over. He needed to stop- he needed to _see_ -

Something heavy hit the back of Arin’s kart, rocking him on his front tires for a hot second and nearly causing him to swerve off the track. He skidded to a halt on the beach, his HUD fading away as the game came to an end. The dust settled, and Arin started to turn his head when a heavy palm landed on his shoulder and a warm breath hissed by his ear.

“Arin, I love you. But I swear on my father’s grave that you will die by my hand.”

“But-” Arin whimpered as Leigh Daniel Avidan burst into laughter behind him. “But your dad’s not dead-?”

And Arin cracked too, Dan flopping over his shoulders in a lanky embrace, warm, downy feathers enveloping them both, from Danny’s big, newly-acquired white wings. “Really, though, I could throw you from the Eiffel Tower right now and feel _nothing_.”

Then, with a rasp of tires on sand, Suzy slid to a stop beside them, venom and disbelief in her eyes.

“Arin Hanson, you had _one job!_ ” She hopped out of the kart and stomped toward them. Dan’s comforting weight lifted from Arin’s back and he started to climb out of his own car, but Suzy got into his face. “You were supposed to tell Danny it’s dangerous to die, not make him an example!”

“Dangerous?” asked Dan, innocent confusion emphasized by his new, feathery accessories. “Isn’t dying _always_ dangerous?”

Arin cleared his throat. “Uh, Dan… So uh…” He stalled, and as much as Suzy wished, she couldn’t stay angry at him. She sighed in irritation.

“Dan, basically we might die _for real_ now because somebody found out about our plan to destroy the ship.”

Dan rounded on Arin. “You _bombed_ me _knowing_ that?!”

“In my defense, I forgot!” Arin retorted.

“You forgot something that important?!”

“NO,” said Arin. “...Yes.”

Suzy threw her head back in an eye roll and Dan brought his hands down on his thighs with a slap of disapproval.

“I remembered after I threw the shell, though! And I really did throw it before you got in first, Dan, _you know I wouldn’t fucking-!!_ ”

“I know, I know,” Dan sighed, though the awkward silence that followed implied otherwise.

“Well, come on, Arin, now we have to go kill the last bug so we can leave.”

Arin nodded and started the Kart back up. “Right, okay,” he huffed, and Dan sighed, leaning heavily against Arin’s back again.

“Oh, I’d come with you guys, but I don’t have my car right now~.”

“ _Whdjj_ \- you have _wings_!” Arin sputtered, kicking Dan into laughter. “You can _fly_! Go fly up and find it!”

“Alright!” Dan acquiesced, giggling as he shoved Arin’s hat over his eyes in his dismount, spreading his new wings and taking to the air with a raucous flutter. Arin fixed his hat and fixed Dan with a glare before turning to Suzy with an apologetic pout. Suzy uncrossed her arms and sighed.

“You’re both okay. That’s what matters. Now you go on a head and follow Danny. I’ll hang back just in case it’s made the lap again.”

Arin sighed too, nodding. “I’m sorry, Suzy, I-”

“It’s okay! It’s okay, Arin.” She smiled. “Make it up to me by beating this level, okay, Babe?”

Arin revved the engine in response, and Suzy’s smile became a grin. She hurried back to her own kart as Arin took off, following the trail of drifting white feathers Dan left in his wake.

* * *

“ **Where the fuck is Julian?!** ” Chris roared, finally dispatching his second alien by grasping a handful of nerves and yanking until the head hit the wall and the whole organism flickered away.

“I don’t know! _I don’t know!_ ” Ding Dong wasn’t having much luck, the defenseless first Brain seemed to have calculated its odds and was now trying to levitate away over the cliff, hanging back only to dodge the various chunks of diced vegetable Ding Dong was flinging at it. He dropped a carrot cube, his eyes darting across the valley to where the third brain was floating, armored nerves exploring the surface of a pile of rocky peppers and tubers- where Julian’s purple health bar read 1%. “ _Julian!!_ ”

Ding Dong was off, making a beeline across the valley towards Julian. Chris did a double-take, groaning as the brain alien’s yellow nerve endings slipped over the ledge above as it got away. He was fully prepared to take on the brain Ding Dong was racing for as he collected his swords, but _Ding Dong-_ Chris glanced up just in time to spot him bounce off a fork in the wall and grab the last silver turret, slam-dunking it into the brain as it loosed a shot- the eye holes of its skull mask flashing dual flares of red light before the whole creature disappeared like a bad jump cut.

“Holy shit!” Chris grinned, following Ding Dong’s path across the lava steam as he stuck a three point landing on the pepper rocks, scuttling under the leaves and out of sight. “Wait up!”

Catching up, Chris found the edge of the rock wall and hurried in, shoving radish and turnip sprouts aside, eager to compliment his friend on his mad hops, but stumbled to a stop just around the bend from the pair.

“Oh my god,” Julian laughed. “I was so scared! I thought all my guts were gonna fall out-”

“Julian...”

Chris took a step back, peering around the corner. Ding Dong and Julian were curled up in the alcove, sweaty, giggly with relief.

“I told you not to get hit!” Ding Dong scolded, taking Julian’s fidgety hands into his own.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Julian protested. “He cheated! That other laser eye came out of nowhere!”

As irritated as Julian sounded, he was grinning ear to ear, and Ding Dong had a smile to match.

“Come on, let’s get you up-” the alien huffed, standing up and pulling Julian with him. “There’s still one of those brain players out there and we need to find something to heal you-”

“Me? Why?”

“Well, you got _hit,_ didn’t you?”

“I mean, that’s what I _thought,_ ” Julian hummed, freeing a hand to pat vaguely at his middle where the shot had ‘connected’.

“Chris can explain. Meanwhile the heads-up says you’re down to one percent health-”

“Oh, a one-percenter now, am I?” Julian quipped, brows perked, eyelids lowered. Ding Dong scoffed.

“Are you gonna twirl your mustache and forget how much bananas cost now?”

“That’s… Assuming I could remember something like that in the first place,” Julian dropped the flirty bit, squinting into the middle distance in his effort to recall, one hand paused midway to his mustache. That got Ding Dong tickled, a warm chuckle and a chiding ‘ _Julian..._ ’ rolling from his lips before he planted them on Julian’s.


	62. Missed Connection

Pain bloomed across Matt’s face as he recoiled, dainty fingers prodding at his nose, trying vainly to regain his sense through misty eyes and the telltale sounds of Ryan retching over his shoulder.

“Ryan! What the _fuck,_ Dude!” he yelped, once he’d gotten enough of his marbles together to process speech.

“ _What the fuck, yourself!_ ” Ryan retorted, spite gurgling out of his throat, along with whatever else. “ _Oh yea_ _aa_ _h,_ ‘Ryan’s about to die, perfect time to get my smooch on!’ _Real_ _smooth_ _, Matt!_ ”

“I healed you, ya’ ungrateful shit!”

“Do I _look_ like a princess?”

Matt couldn’t look, and even if he could he wouldn’t see anything. Involuntary tears blurred his vision, red glasses in one hand, a red smear on the other as he dabbed at his copper-tasting lips. “Why are you getting all up-in-arms about this? I picked kissing because it doesn’t _mean_ anything- you said so yourself!”

“That’s not what it’s _about_ , Matt! Maybe if you’d _think_ _a little_ before you _do_ -!”

Ryan got quiet as Matt turned to him, unseeing eyes scanning the blur of blue and black, shaking hands attempting to stymie the dribble of fluids from his newly-busted nose and watery ducts, brows drawn in a mix of concern and offense- and with what he oped was a patient, determined, grown-up tone he asked. “Why are you being like this?”

And Ryan’s response. “Because I’m _sick of your shit, Matt!_ I’m _done_.”

The smudge of a man turned and lid off the metal palm to the ground, crunching like gravel beneath his boots as he walked away.

“Ryan?” Ethan dropped into place beside Matt, looking off in the direction Ryan had gone, but turning Matt’s way, taking the thinner man’s long face into his hands his own mug coming into sharp focus as he inspected Matt’s features. “Ooh, he boogered you up good, didn’t he? I think that’s grounds for divorce, right thur.”

Matt shook his head, pulling out of Ethan’s palms. “I can heal. Go uh, go make sure he doesn’t get himself killed, okay?”

“You for sure?”

“Yeah,” Matt sighed, fidgeting with the glasses in his hands. “Be right behind you guys. I need a minute.”

Ethan nodded, hopping down from the hand and scurrying away. Matt sniffed, immediately hacking at the half-clotted gunk that jumped down his throat and wondering why, if he took so much shit from Ryan constantly, part of their show dynamic, part of their sense of humor, part of their friendship, why was it only hurting _now?_

 

Matt lifted his palm and drew it towards himself, the sleeping giant mirroring his actions and pulling him closer, its blue eyes slowly drifting open as Matt stepped inside, clipping through the mech’s form and feeling his senses adjust. Evidence of his injuries disappeared as he drew health from the machine, in fact, all of Matt disappeared. When he opened his eyes he saw the tunnel ahead, his own metal hand before him. He felt the rough texture of the walls around his spine and shoulders, scooting himself backward until he was out of the claustrophobic vent and out on the mountainside. He wasn’t as big as the ‘real’ Iron Giant, but as he stood he still had enough clearance to spot Ryan and Ethan. Ryan had made a bit of distance- probably involving his time travel to get away from Ethan, who grappled across the board, his speed no match for Ryan’s cheats.

Matt followed at a casual pace, feeling as if he were moving in slow motion, or maybe chest-deep in water, inertia drawing him into the next step and the next, the familiarity of simply walking was made strange again. And it was oddly peaceful. Honed in on the action, he let his thoughts wander. Past the current situation, past whatever he might have done to piss Ryan off, past Mount Hollywood, past Beverly Hills, past the Santa Monica Pier, to happier times. When they got home, he would have to take Ryan to Japan again. Princess or not, Matt was sure they could save this happily ever after. They were something special after all- even if it didn’t feel like it right then, they had something nobody else on this ship had.

* * *

As antsy as Zach felt, he knew he could hold out a bit longer. Ross had blindfolded him and dragged him off again, and now the pair were back on top of the apartment building, just adjacent to the mustache. Ross was leaning hard against the barrier wall, peering over the ledge at the covered entryway where two aliens in space marine armor stood vigilant. The surrounding boundary line across the road and the blockade around every cross street surrounding them was aiming enormous turrets and massive stadium-worthy lights directly at them- the only entry point to the scout ship. It had been fifteen minutes since they’d made it up here and Zach ad caught his breath- honestly, more exercise than he’d done in the past year – and now he was itching to move again. He cleared his throat.

“So...”

Ross pulled his mask down past his chin. “I haven’t done ninja shit in like four years, okay? We got one shot to teleport in there and I’m _tryin_ ’ to calculate windspeed.”

Zach squinted down at the oversized awning below. He couldn’t see the opening underneath it, and he couldn’t imagine Ross did either. “Why?”

Ross raised a hand, a slim piece of metal shaped like an X shimmering between his fingers. “This is the marker I use to teleport. If I can’t see where I’m going then it defaults to this thing. I’m _attuned_ to it, y’could say? But, ah, I gotta get it _in there_ is the trick. The wind could catch it, but that could fuck us over real bad, as much as it could help.”

Zach stuck two fingers in his mouth, then held them to the air… Then wiped them on his shirt and shrugged. “You can make it.”

“Yer too kind.”

“No, seriously, let me help. You can definitely make this.”

“How would you help, exactly?”

“Oh, _come on,_ O’Donovan, I know why you’re keeping me around and it’s not my good looks and positive attitude, _marvelous qualities they both may be._ No, _you_ know I’m psychic.”

Ross stared at Zach, the picture of slack-jawed befuddlement. “I know you’re _psycho_ , if that’s what you’re saying.”

Zach pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “ _Simpleton_ ,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head and shrugging it off. “Look. _You_ fling it down there, _I_ make sure it gets in the hole. Telekinesis. Understand?”

“I understand, but I _absolutely_ don’t trust you.”

“Don’t have to, just toss it down there, watch the magic happen.”

Ross set his jaw, looked at Zach, looked at the mustache, leaned over the side and flung the X like a frisbee, straight down the side of the building. He tensed, watching it drop- down, down, then it caught the wind and twisted in the air, sailing across the street, under the awning, and out of sight. Ross’s jaw dropped again and he turned to Zach, who was boredly digging in his ear.

“Hm? Did you throw it yet?”

“Wh- _you_ did it, Zach- you made-...” Ross squinted. “Were you _fucking_ with me?”

Zach flicked whatever he’d retrieved from his ear off the side of the building. “I don’t have _telekinesis_ , if that’s what you’re saying.”

“Don’t fucking parrot me! You _lied_! I almost wasted our one shot!”

“I’m a precog, dipshit, I saw it happen like five minutes ago.”

“Stop making shit up!”

Zach groaned and grabbed Ross’s shirt sleeve. “Whatever, Peebrain, you _teleport_! How is that any less crazy?”

Ross hissed out a breath through grit teeth. “ _Fine_. We’re going in. But you have to be _absolutely_ silent, okay?”

Zach drew pinched fingers across his lips and drew a cross over his chest in the same motion.

“What are you, twelve?”

Zach threw him the bird.

“Fine, fine. But hang on tight, I’m not going back to get you if you fall off halfway.”

 

It looked like a high school locker room. Well, at first glance. It must have been a very affluent school, enamel lockers lined the space, steel benches set to either side of the aisles. There was enough space for a couple football teams in here, they obviously expected far more recruits than they actually got. The aisle to the left was flanked by lockers, but the one to the right held a circular doorway, closed like the aperture of a camera, blades converging in a spiral- and there was Ninja Brian, knife wedged in the wall, trying to wrench out the control panel immediately adjacent to it.

Ross raised a hand, and Brian turned his icy glare their way until he put it down. Brian raised a hand over his shoulder then, not a greeting but a command. Ross dipped his chin, pulling the ninjato from his back and brandishing it, turning to the door. Brian shook his head, pulling the knife from the wall and pointing it at the hole- or, lack thereof. It was as if the knife had never been there at all, and Brian demonstrated the same on a bench nearby, stabbing the blade into the seat and dragging it through- to no effect whatsoever- and pointed at the door.

Ross furrowed his brow and stepped in front of the aperture’s center. He raised his sword, looking down the blade to line it up with the door-slices. Zach glanced between Brian, Ross, and the door, confused- and Ross struck, driving his sword through the door and twisting, pulling the pieces of the door apart. Brian dug his knife in and pulled the other way, the hole in the center opening wider and wider. Zach leaned between their efforts, glancing through the porthole to the little white room on the other side, and the dark figure within it.

“Chris?!”

Zach leapt through the hole and rolled on the other side, the door springing open as it sensed his entry. The figure snapped to attention- Brian yanked his knife out of the door- Ross lost his grip on his blade, grabbing for Zach- Zach raced up to the figure and wrapped his arms around him, burying his face in the dark sleeveless shirt.

“ _Chris!_ How did the ship sever our connection? I _knew_ it was the ship- I knew you weren’t really dead-!”

The figure cleared its throat, it’s strange, gray eyes blinking dumbly in shock.

“… _ **My name is Jeff.**_ ”


End file.
